"Mr Tate doesn't ask my pleasure in his coming and going any more than the King asks Mr Tate's in his." "It would do you no good, sir, to have it known that he was here," Darrell reminded me with a significant nod of his head.
Darrell had been a good friend to me and had won my regard, but, from an infirmity of temper that I have touched on before, his present tone set me against him.

I take reproof badly, and age has hardly tamed me to it.
"No good with whom ?" I asked, smiling.

"The Duke of York?
My Lord Arlington?
Or do you mean the Duke of Monmouth?
It is he whom I have to please now." "None of them love Ranters," answered Darrell, keeping his face stiff and inscrutable.
"But one of them may prefer a Ranter to a Papist," laughed I.
The thrust told, Darrell grew red.

To myself I seemed to have hit suddenly on the key of a mystery.

Was I then a pawn in the great game of the Churches, and Darrell another, and (to speak it with all due respect), these grand dukes little better?
Had Phineas Tate also his place on the board where souls made the stakes?
In such a game none is too low for value, none too high for use.