His voice was calm, but there seemed still to echo in it a trace of some violent emotion newly passed; a slight smile curved his lips, but there was more malice than mirth in it.
"Mr Dale," said he, "the gentleman who stands by you once beguiled an idle minute for me by telling me of a certain strange prophecy made concerning you which he had, he said, from your own lips, and in which my name--or at least some King's name--and yours were quaintly coupled.
You know what I refer to ?" I bowed low, wondering what in Heaven's name he would be at.

It was, no doubt, high folly to love Mistress Gwyn, but scarcely high treason.
Besides, had not I repented and forsworn her?
Ah, but the second member of the prophecy?
I glanced eagerly at M.de Perrencourt, eagerly at the paper before the King.

There were lines on the paper, but I could not read them, and M.de Perrencourt's face was fully as baffling.
"If I remember rightly," pursued the King, after listening to a whispered sentence from his sister, "the prediction foretold that you should drink of my cup.

Is it not so ?" "It was so, Sir, although what your Majesty quotes was the end, not the beginning of it." For an instant a smile glimmered on the King's face; it was gone and he proceeded gravely.
"I am concerned only with that part of it.

I love prophecies and I love to see them fulfilled.