'Tis only the
man who has won England's greatest victories for her who must contend
with such things as these."
"Mrs. Masham has no enmity against me," said Osmonde. "I have no power
she would take from me."
"And no wife she would displace about the throne," his Grace added. "The
world waits to behold your Duchess still?"
"'Tis I who wait," said Osmonde, gravely.
There was a pause, and while it lasted, Marlborough gazed at him with a
thought dawning in his eye.
"You have seen her," he said at last, in a low voice.
Osmonde remained silent. A moment before he had risen, and so stood.
The man who regarded him experienced at the moment a singular thing,
feeling that it was singular, and vaguely asking himself why. It was a
sudden new realisation of his physical perfection. His tall, great body
was so complete in grace and strength, each line and muscle of it so
fine a thing. In the workings of such a physical being there could be
no flaw. There was such beauty in his countenance, such strength and
faithful sweetness in his firm, full mouth, such pure, strong passion
in the deeps of his large, kind, human eye. The handsomest and the
tallest man in England he might be, but he was something more--a
complete noble human thing, to whom it surely seemed that nature should
be kind, since he had so honoured and done reverence to the gifts she
had bestowed upon him.
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