“When I was younger,” said Roxholm, “it angered me to hear my looks praised so much; I was boy enough to feel I must be unmanly.  But now—­’tis but as it should be, that a man should have straight limbs and a great body, and a clean-cut countenance.  It should be nature—­not a thing to be remarked; it should be mere nature—­and the other an unnatural thing.  ’Tis cruel that either man or woman should be weak or uncomely.  All should be as perfect parts of the great universe as are the mountains and the sun.”

“’Tis not so yet,” remarked my Lord Marlborough, with his inscrutable smile. “’Tis not so yet.”

“Not yet,” said Roxholm.  “But let each creature live to make it so—­men that they may be clean and joyous and strong; women that they may be mates for them.  They should be as strong as we, and have as great courage.”

His Lordship smiled again.  They were at the Hague at this time and in his quarters, where he was pleased occasionally to receive the young officer with a gracious familiarity.  For reasons of his own, he wished to know him well and understand the strengths and weaknesses of his character.  Therefore he led him into talk, and was pleased to find that he frequently said things worth hearing, though they were often new and somewhat daring things to be said by one of his age at this period, when ’twas not the custom for a man to think for himself, but either to follow the licentious follies of his fellows or accept without question such statements as his Chaplain made concerning a somewhat unreasoning Deity, His inflexible laws, and man’s duty towards Him.  That a handsome youth, for example, should, in a serious voice and with a thoughtful face, announce that beauty should be but nature, and ugliness regarded as a disease, instead of humbly submitted to as the will of God, was, indeed, a startling heresy and might have been regarded as impious, even though so gravely said.  Therefore it was my Lord Marlborough smiled.

“I spoke to you of marriage once before,” he remarked.  “You bring it back to me.  Do you care for women?” bluntly.

Roxholm met his eye with his own straight, cool gaze.

“Yes, my Lord,” he answered with some grimness, and said no more.

“The one you wait for has not yet come to Court, as I said that day,” his Grace went on, and now he was grave again, and had even fallen into a speculative tone.  “But it struck me once that I heard of her—­though she is no fit companion for you yet—­and Heaven knows if she ever will be.  The path before her is too full of traps for safety.”

Roxholm did not speak.  Whether fond of women or not, he was not given to talking of them, and a certain reserve would have prevented his entering upon any discussion of the future Lady Roxholm, whomsoever she might in the future prove to be.  He stood in an easy attitude, watching with some vague curiosity the expression of his chief’s countenance.  But suddenly he found himself checking a slight start, and this was occasioned by his Lordship’s next words.