him. He felt only the garish and the splendid. So it was that at
Kenilworth, where his Queen had visited him, the fetes that he had held
would far outshine the fete which would take place in Greenwich Park on
this May Day. The fete of this May Day would take place, but would he
see it? The thought flashed through his mind that he might not; but he
trod it under foot; not through an inborn, primitive egotism like that
of Lempriere, but through an innate arrogance, an unalterable belief that
Fate was ever on his side. He had played so many tricks with Fate, had
mocked while taking its gifts so often, that, like the son who has
flouted his indulgent father through innumerable times, he conceived that
he should never be disinherited. It irked him that he should be fighting
with a farmer, as he termed the Seigneur of the Jersey Isle; but there
was in the event, too, a sense of relief, for he had a will for murder.
Yesterday's events were still fresh in his mind; and he had a feeling
that the letting of Lempriere's blood would cool his own and be some cure
for the choler which the presence of these strangers at the Court had
wrought in him.

There were better swordsmen in England than he, but his skill was
various, and he knew tricks of the trade which this primitive Norman
could never have learnt. He had some touch of wit, some biting
observation, and, as he neared the place of the encounter, he played upon
the coming event with a mordant frivolity. Not by nature a brave man,
he was so much a fatalist, such a worshipper of his star, that he had
acquired an artificial courage which had served him well. The unschooled
gentlemen with him roared with laughter at his sallies, and they came to
the place of meeting as though to a summer feast.

"Good-morrow, nobility," said Leicester with courtesy overdone, and
bowing much too low. "Good-morrow, valentine," answered Lempriere,