“I would not let them bind his little limbs and head as is their way,” she said.  “From the first hour I spoke with his chief nurse, I gave her my command that he should be left free to grow and to kick his pretty legs as soon as he was strong enough.  See, John, he stirs them a little now.  They say he is of wondrous size and long and finely made, and indeed he seems so to me—­and ’tis not only because I am so proud, is it?”

“I know but little of their looks when they are so young, sweet,” her lord answered, his voice and eyes as tender as her own; for in sooth he felt himself moved as he had been at no other hour in his life before, though he was a man of a nature as gentle as ’twas strong.  “I will own that I had ever thought of them as strange, unbeauteous red things a man almost held in fear, and whose ugliness a woman but loved because she was near angel; but this one—­” and he drew nearer still with a grave countenance—­“surely it looks not like the rest.  ’Tis not so red and crumple-visaged—­its tiny face hath a sort of comeliness.  It hath a broad brow, and its eyes will sure be large and well set.”

The Duchess slipped her fair arm about his neck—­he was so near to her ’twas easy done—­and her smile trembled into sweet tears which were half laughter.

“Ah, we love him so,” she cried, “how could we think him like any other?  We love him so and are so happy and so proud.”

And for a moment they remained silent, their cheeks pressed together, the scent of the spring flowers wafting up to them from the terrace, the church bells pealing out through the radiant air.

“He was born of love,” his mother whispered at last.  “He will live amid love and see only honour and nobleness.”

“He will grow to be a noble gentleman,” said my lord Duke.  “And some day he will love a noble lady, and they will be as we have been—­as we have been, beloved.”

And their faces turned towards each other as if some law of nature drew them, and their lips met—­and their child stirred softly in its first sleep.

CHAPTER II

“He is the King”

The bells pealed at intervals throughout the day in at least five villages over which his Grace of Osmonde was lord—­at Roxholm they pealed, at Marlowell Dane, at Paulyn Dorlocke, at Mertounhurst, at Camylott—­and in each place, when night fell, bonfires were lighted and oxen roasted whole, while there were dancing and fiddling and drinking of ale on each village green.

In truth, as Dame Watt had said, he had begun well—­Gerald Walter John Percy Mertoun, Marquess of Roxholm; and well it seemed he would go on.  He throve in such a way as was a wonder to his physicians and nurses, the first gentlemen finding themselves with no occasion for practising their skill, since he suffered from no infant ailments whatsoever, but fed and slept and grew lustier and fairer every hour.  He grew so finely—­perhaps because his young mother