The Shadow of Tyburn Tree

and seriously queered his pitch, but it seemed that he could hardly have played his cards better.

She had not the faintest resemblance to any other girl that he had ever met, and he could not make up his mind if he liked her or not'. She had a great opinion of herself, but not without reason, as she was unusually intelligent as well as beautiful in a strange way that was all her own. He recalled the Marquise's warning that the slim, green-eyed Russian was reputed to have a most malicious sense of humour, and his own experience of her led him to believe that when her passions were aroused she would prove extremely vicious; but he knew that he was already strongly attracted, and decided that it was, perhaps, just as well that his inclination coincided with his duty, since it was so clearly in the interests of his mission to develop his budding affaire with her.

The whole of the next day he spent in exploring the city and enter­ing into conversation with everyone with whom he came in contact; and the opinions of the townsfolk gave him cause to moderate the view that Natalia Andreovna had given him of King Gustavus, as a monarch with little real power or prestige.

He gathered that before Gustavus's reign Sweden had been reduced to abject poverty by the misrule of several generations of rapacious nobles who had preyed upon her mercilessly; whereas, during the past sixteen years the King had brought her people both freedom and prosperity. With the aid of the banker Liljencrantz he had straightened out the appalling mess in which he found the country's finances; and with the aid of the jurist Liliestrale he had. restored both justice and the dignity of the church. He had himself impeached the two Supreme Courts before the Senate, disbenched five of the eight judges, and dismissed scores of lesser magistrates convicted of taking bribes. He had redistributed the clergy's livings and compelled the venal priests among them to live in their parishes and serve their parishioners, instead of taking their fees for doing nothing. He had reorganised the army, abolished the sale of commissions, and made merit the only road to promotion.

The latter step was one of the causes of the hostility with which the nobles regarded him, but their main grievance was that, having robbed their Estate of much of its former power, they could no longer sell their votes on domestic matters to the highest bidder, which venality had previously been one of their main sources of income.

The King, it emerged, was a great lover of the spectacular and also of the theatre. Some people resented the large sums he spent on display, and his purchase of a magnificent collection of art treasures from all parts of Europe; but most were of the opinion that the former was compensated for by the resulting free entertainments and that the latter redounded to the glory of their country.

The only matter in which Gustavus had seriously jeopardised his popularity with the masses was in the taxation of spirits. Formerly it had been an age-old right for everyone to distil whatever they required for their own consumption, and the bare idea of taxing liquor raised a most frightful outcry. Troops had to be employed to collect the tax, and, on even this proving ineffective, the King had sought to turn the manufacture into a royal monopoly by ordering the destruction of all private stills and erecting large distilleries of his own. Riots had ensued, and the indignant mob burnt down several of the royal distilleries, so the King had endeavoured to sell the monopoly to the Government, but without success, and the struggle still continued.

Apart from this grievance, Roger formed the opinion that the great mass of the people was solidly behind their King. Moreover, they both hated and feared the Russians, and since they still regarded the Baltic provinces as the rightful property of the Swedish crown, were quite prepared to support Gustavus in a war aimed at retrieving this portion of their old empire.

Next morning Roger drove out to the French Embassy, and at breakfast there was introduced by the Ambassador to several gentle­men, most of whom were Swedes. Among them was Count Hans Axel af Fersan, a great Francophile, who openly avowed that when he had been a visitor at the Court of Versailles he had fallen in love with Queen Marie Antoinette. He and Roger took an immediate liking to one another and on Roger's side, although he was in no situation to acknowledge it, the bond was strengthened by the discovery that they were both partially of Scots descent; since his mother had been a McElfic and the daughter of the Eail of Kildonan, while the af Fersans were a branch of the Macpherson clan which had settled in Sweden many years before.

The name of Count Axel af Fersan was already known to Roger, from his talks with various people on the previous day, as that of a prominent Swedish statesman who was the leader of the Hat party and one of the King's most bitter opponents in the Riksdag; but he felt that his new acquaintance could hardly be old enough to have played a leading part in Swedish politics for any length of time, and on his tactful inquiry the Count burst out laughing.

'Nay, nay, my friend!' he declared with a shake of his head. 'You are confusing me with my revered senior Count Fredrik, who was already a great figure in Sweden before I was born. And, being of a j younger generation, I do not share the prejudices against the King which still rankle among the older nobility. In fact I think that many of the reforms he has introduced were long overdue, and in some ways I have a considerable admiration for him.'

Roger smiled. 'I notice, Count, that you qualify your last state­ment. Would it be indiscreet to inquire the traits that you admire in him and those you do not?'

'Since he has given us a free press and the right of free speech I will do so willingly,' Count Hans smiled back. 'Being a normal man myself, to whom the vices of the Greeks have never made any appeal, I regard his private life as most unsavoury; and his character leaves much to be desired. Mayhap 'tis due to the manner in which he was brought up, with his person surrounded by people whom he could only regard as spies and enemies, that is to blame; but he is so secretive and deceitful that it would be difficult to find his equal as a liar. On the other hand he is a man of great attainments, high courage and prodig­ious brain. As a lad he was extraordinarily precocious, with a vivid imagination and most retentive memory. He had only to see a play to absorb the whole content of it; and his attendants declare that on dressing the following day he would solemnly declaim the longest speeches to which he had listened, without fault. Before he was twenty-five he had read every important book of which French literature can boast, and among others, acquired a mastery of the barbarous ^ Swedish tongue. He was- the first monarch capable of addressing his people in their own language that we have had for generations; and, even in the age when oratory has again become a great art, he is among the finest orators in all Europe. He is an arch-plotter but capable, resolute and brave. His greatest merit, to my mind, is his intense love of his country, and 'tis that which attaches me to him more than anything else.'

To Roger's annoyance their host interrupted the conversation at that moment to inquire as to the length of his stay in Sweden. He returned an evasive answer, and then became involved in general talk; as several of the gentlemen present, including Count Hans, asked him to call upon them and offered to show him some of the beauties of their country.

When he was about to leave, the black-clad major-domo came up to him and said that Madame la Marquise hoped that his engage­ments were not so pressing that he would fail to wait upon her in her boudoir before returning to the city; so he willingly allowed himself to be conducted upstairs.

During his short stay in Sweden Roger had already been struck with the individuality of the house furniture. It was nearly all of natural unpolished wood or else painted white and decorated with scrolls of flowers in the gayest colours; but Madame de Pons' boudoir was a little oasis of Versailles set down in this far-northern country. Its cabinets, chairs and occasional tables, were of highly polished and elaborately inlaid satin-wood, a Buhl clock adorned the mantel and pictures by Boucher and Fragonard hung in the satin-covered panels of the walls. It was the perfect setting for its elegant owner.

She made Roger sit down and tell her all about himself, then she discoursed a little plaintively on the hard lot of a diplomat's wife, separated for years on end from her family and friends. Roger learned that her name was Angelique, which he thought very pretty; and that before coming to Sweden she and her husband had been stationed in Berlin. She greatly preferred Stockholm to the Prussian capital, as there were many more entertainments at King Gustavus's court than there had been at that of the mean, cantankerous Frederick the Great, who had ruled from his bleak, barrack-like town of Potsdam until his death twenty-one months ago. But, even so, she hankered sadly after the super-civilised delights of her own country.

Roger sought to console her and by gentle stages introduced a flirtatious note into his conversation; then he moved swiftly over to the tapestry-covered sofa on which she sat, took her hand, and lightly kissed her cheek.

She let her hand remain in his but drew her head away with a laugh. 'You silly boy. What made you think I wanted you to do that?'

' 'Twas mere selfishness,' he declared. 'And for my own gratification. You are the most charming person in all Sweden and my thoughts have been full of you ever since we danced together.'

'Then you had best find some other image to enshrine in your mind; for I warn you that you will derive little profit from thinking of me other than as a friend.'