' Yet, for the first time in his life, he was to disobey that
Sovereign. Nothing, not even her protest of 'No, no,' could stop him from
getting down on his knees, as if he had been a younger subject. The
infirmities were conquered by his desire to pay to the Queen that
reverence and loyalty which had always been hers. The bonds of age were
burst, although his quaint complaint about himself that very evening was,
'You know I want a minute or two to get in motion.'
Despite bowed shoulders and rusty joints, he still had something of the
lithe, strenuous carriage of his youth. In his dignity of manner, there
almost seemed to you a glimpse of the gallant age when forbears had gone
whistling to the headsman. He was of a line which counted in English
history, which among its women had a Lady Jane Grey. His mother, with the
mother's wistful love and pride, had traced that line for him. He was not
deeply moved, unless by the romance and the tragedy that gathered about
it.
But the aristocrat abode in the democrat, nature's doing. He was of the
people in being whole-souled for them; he was not by them. Verily, he had
been through the winters in their interest. The ripe harvest was in his
hair, which had become thin above a face, rugged with intellect; over a
broad, decisive brow, strewn with furrows.
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