least, in spite of your pretty cousin--you are more close than any of
us! Well; I will tell you as if you did not know."

He put his fingers together, in his old manner.

"First," said he, "he is Lord High Admiral again. I count that very
rash. We are Protestants, we English, you know; and we like not a Papist
to be our guard-in-chief."

"You will have to put up with a Papist as a King, some day," said I.

"Why I suppose so--though I would not have been so sure two years ago.
But a King is another matter from an High Admiral."

"Well; what else has he done?" I asked.

"He hath been readmitted to the Council, in the very face of the Test
Act too. But it is how he bears himself and speaks that is the worst of
all. He carries himself and his religion as openly as he can; and does
all that is in His power to relieve the Papists of disabilities. That is
very courageous, I know; but it is not very shrewd. God knows where he
will stop if once he is on the throne. I think he will not be there
long."

I said nothing; for indeed my instructions were on those very points;
and I knew them all as well as Chiffinch, and, I think, better.

He spoke, presently, of myself.

"As for you, Mr. Mallock, I need not tell you how high you are in favour
here. _Si monumentum requiris, circumspice_"; and he waved his hands at
the rich rooms.

"His Majesty is very good," I said.

"His Majesty hath a peerage for you, if you want it. He said he had made
too many grocers and lickspittles into knights, to make you one."

I cannot deny that to hear that news pleased me. Yet even then I
hesitated.

"Mr. Chiffinch," said I at last, "if you mean what you say, I have
something to answer to that."

"Well?" said he.

"Let me have one year more of obscurity. I may be able to do much more
that way. In one year from now I shall be married, as I told you. Well,
when I have a wife she must come to town, and make acquaintances; and
so I shall be known in any case. Let me have it then, if I want it--as a
wedding gift; so that she shall come as My Lady. And I will do what I
can then, in His Majesty's service, more publicly."

"What if His Majesty is dead before that?" said he, regarding me
closely.

"Then we will go without," said I.

He nodded; and said no more.

* * * * *

It was strange to lie down that night in a great room, with four posts
and all their hangings about me, with my Lord Peterborough's arms