He felt only the garish and the splendid.

So it was that at Kenilworth, where his Queen had visited him, the fetes that he had held would far outshine the fete which would take place in Greenwich Park on this May Day.

The fete of this May Day would take place, but would he see it?
The thought flashed through his mind that he might not; but he trod it under foot; not through an inborn, primitive egotism like that of Lempriere, but through an innate arrogance, an unalterable belief that Fate was ever on his side.

He had played so many tricks with Fate, had mocked while taking its gifts so often, that, like the son who has flouted his indulgent father through innumerable times, he conceived that he should never be disinherited.

It irked him that he should be fighting with a farmer, as he termed the Seigneur of the Jersey Isle; but there was in the event, too, a sense of relief, for he had a will for murder.