At this period all the world talked of the wondrous and splendid Churchill, who, having fought brilliantly for the Stuarts and been made by them first Lord Churchill of Eyemouth, and next Baron Churchill of Sandridge, having, after receiving these advancements, the cold astuteness to see the royal fortunes waver perilously, deserted James the Second with stately readiness and transferred his services to William of Orange.  He was rewarded with an earldom and such favour as made him the most shining figure both at the Court of England and in the foreign countries which had learned to regard his almost supernatural powers with somewhat approaching awe.

This man inspired Roxholm with a singular feeling; he in fact exercised over him the fascination he exercised over so many others, but in the case of the young Marquess, wonder and admiration were mixed with other emotions.  There were stories so brilliant to be heard of him on all sides, stories of other actions so marvellously ruthless and of things so wondrously mean.  Upon a bargain so shameless he had built so wondrous a career—­a faithfulness of service so magnificent he had closed with a treachery so base.  All greatness and all littleness, all heroism and all crimes, seemed to combine themselves in this one strange being.  Having shamelessly sold his youth to a King’s mistress, he devoted his splendid maturity to a tender, faithful passion for a beauteous virago, whose displeasure was the sole thing on earth which moved him to pain or fear.  In truth ’twas not his genius, his bravery, his victories, which held Roxholm’s thought upon him most constantly; ’twas two other things, the first being the marvel of his control over himself, the power with which he held in subjection his passions, his emotions, almost, it seemed, his very thoughts themselves—­the power with which he had trained John Churchill to be John Churchill’s servant—­in peril, in temptation from any weakness to which he did not choose to succumb, in circumstances which, arising without warning, might have caused another man to start, to falter, to change colour, but which he encountered with indomitable calm.

“Tis that I wish to learn,” said the young nobleman in his secret thoughts as he watched him at Court, in the world outside it, among soldiers, statesmen, women, in the society of those greater than himself, of those smaller, of those he would win and of those he would repel. “’Tis that I would learn:  to be stronger than my very self, so that naught can betray me—­no passion I am tormented by, no anger I would conceal, no lure I would resist.  ’Tis a man’s self who oftenest entraps him.  The traitor once subject, life lies at one’s feet.”