“In the future I shall take pains to hear what befalls her,” the Duke said.  “In two or three years’ time we shall hear somewhat.  She will marry a duke—­be a King’s mistress, or go to ruin in some less splendid and more tragic way.  No woman is born into the world with such beauty as they say is hers, and such wild fire in her veins, without setting the world—­or herself—­in flames.  A new Helen of Troy she may be, and yet she is but the ninth daughter of a drunken Gloucestershire baronet.”

’Twas here that Roxholm found himself checking his start, but he had not checked it soon enough to escape the observance of the quickest sighted man in Europe.

“What!” he said, “you have heard of her?”

“I have seen her, your Grace,” Roxholm answered, “on the hunting field in Gloucestershire.”

“Is she so splendid a young creature as they say?  Was she in boy’s attire, as we hear her rascal father lets her ride with him?”

“I thought her a boy, and had never seen one like her,” said Roxholm, and he was amazed to feel himself disturbed as if he spoke not of a child, but of a beauty of ripe years.

“Is she of such height and strength and wondrous development as rumour tells us?” his Grace continued, still observing him as if with interest.  “At twelve years old, ’tis told, she is tall enough for eighteen, and can fence and leap hedges and break horses, and that she plays the tyrant over men four times her age.”

“I saw her but once, your Grace,” replied Roxholm.  “She was tall and strong and handsome.”

“Go and see her again, my lord Marquess,” said the Captain-General, turning to his papers.  “But do not wait too long.  Such beauties must be caught early.”

When he went back to his quarters, my lord Marquess strolled through the quaint streets of the town slowly, and looking upon the ground as he walked.  For some reason he felt vaguely depressed, and, searching within himself for a reason, recognised that the slight cloud resting upon his spirits recalled to him a feeling of his early childhood—­no other than the sense of restless unhappiness he had felt years ago when he had first overheard the story of the wretched Lady of Wildairs and her neglected children.

“Yes,” he said, “’tis almost the same feeling, though then I was a child, and now I am a man.  When I saw the girl at the hunt, and rode home afterwards with Dunstanwolde, listening to her story, there was gloom in the air.  There is that in it to make a man’s spirit heavy.  I must not think of her.”

But Fate herself was against him.  For one thing, my Lord Marlborough had brought back to him, with a few words, with strange vividness the picture of the brilliant young figure in its hunting scarlet, its gallop across the field with head held high, its flying leap over the hedge, and the gay insolence and music of its laugh.

“A child could not have made a man so remember her,” he said, impatiently.  “She was half woman then—­half lovely, youthful devil.  There is an ill savour about it all.”