d the message from
Pierre Radisson and took myself off a mighty mad man; for youth can be
angry, indeed. And the cause of the anger was the same as fretteth the
Old World and New to-day. Rebecca was measuring Jack by old standards.
I was measuring Rebecca by new standards. And the measuring of the old
by the new and the new by the old teareth love to tatters.

Pierre Radisson I met at the entrance to the Fur Company's offices in
Broad Street. His steps were of one on steel springs and his eyes
afire with victory.

"We've beaten them," he muttered to me. "His Majesty favours us! His
Majesty accepted the furs and would have us at Whitehall to-morrow
night to give account of our doings. An they try to trick me out of
reward I'll have them to the foot o' the throne!"

But of Pierre Radisson's intrigue against his detractors I was not
thinking at all.

"Were the courtiers about?" I asked.

"Egad! yes; Palmer and Buckingham and Ashley leering at Her Grace of
Portsmouth, with Cleveland looking daggers at the new favourite, and
the French ambassador shaking his sides with laughter to see the women
at battle. His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, got us access to
present the furs. Egad, Ramsay, I am a rough man, but it seemed
prodigious strange to see a king giving audience in the apartments of
the French woman, and great men leering for a smile from that huzzy!
The king lolls on a Persian couch with a litter of spaniel puppies on
one side and the French woman on the other. And what do you think that
black-eyed jade asks when I present the furs and tell of our captured
Frenchmen? To have her own countrymen sold to the Barbadoes so that
she may have the money for her gaming-table! Egad, I spiked that
pretty plan by saying the Frenchmen were sending her a present of furs,
too! To-morrow night we go to Whitehall to entertain His Majesty with
our doings! We need not fear enemies in the Company now!"

"I'm not so sure of that," said I. "The Gillams have been working
against you here, and so has Brigdar."

"Hah--let them work!"

"Did you see _her_?" I asked.

"_Her_?" questions Radisson absently. "Pardieu, there are so many
_hers_ about the court now with no she-saint among them! Which do you
mean?"

The naming of Hortense after such speech was impossible. Without more
mention of the court, we entered the Company's office, where sat the
councillors in session around a long table. No one rose to welcome