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.
"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.
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