The Duke did not move. But something went through his face, very fast, and was put away again.
"Rendle," he said.
"Yes."
"Bertram Rendle. Sergeant Rendle. Dead."
"Yes. On the ninth of February. He is buried at St. Giles. I could not afford a stone. I have had his name cut on my sister's, which is a little crowded, but she would not have minded."
He turned away from her, quite abruptly, and put one hand flat on the mantelshelf, and stood looking down into the fire. She waited. At the far end of the room Robin was turning the globe round and round, very slowly, and saying the names of places to himself under his breath.
"I asked after him," the Duke said at last, without looking round. "In 'sixteen, when I sold out. I wrote to the depot. They said he had taken his discharge and his Chelsea pension and gone home, and they did not know where home was. I thought it was Oxfordshire. He talked about Oxfordshire. I ought to have looked harder. I meant to. And then my father was ill, and then he died, and then—" He stopped. "No. That's an excuse. I ought to have looked harder."
"He didn't want to be found, Your Grace. He said you would try to give him money."
"I did try to give him money. In Brussels, at the end of June, when they had me in a bed in the Rue Ducale with my leg in a box. I tried to give him a hundred pounds and he put it back on the table and saluted and went out. I tried to get him a commission and he said he'd rather be a good sergeant than a bad ensign." The Duke turned round. "He got me out from under Pilgrim. Did he tell you that? The horse came down on my leg in the bottom of a ditch with the French lancers coming over the top of us, and Rendle got down off his own horse, under the lancers, and dug me out with his hands. I had not got a word to say to him afterwards that was any use. And now you tell me he's dead and he had a son and I never knew."
"He taught his son your name," said Frances. "That is why I'm here."