TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—THE COMEDY OUTSIDE THE PLAYHOUSE.

CHAPTER II—THE COMEDY AT WHITEHALL.

CHAPTER III—THE COMEDY OF THE DUKE’S PLAYHOUSE.

CHAPTER IV—THE COMEDY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY.

CHAPTER V—THE COMEDY OF A POOR ACTRESS.

CHAPTER VI—THE COMEDY WHICH BECAME A TRAGEDY.

CHAPTER VII—THE COMEDY OF THE KING’S ELMS.

CHAPTER VIII—THE COMEDY OF THE OLD LOVE.

CHAPTER I.

THE COMEDY OUTSIDE THE PLAYHOUSE.

“’Tis not over yet,” exclaimed Mrs. Gwyn, when she had hurried sufficiently far up Drury Lane to catch a glimpse of the King’s Playhouse. The hour was five in the afternoon and the month was November, so that it might reasonably have been expected that the play would be over. The oil-lamps about the playhouse had been lighted for some time, and a few link-boys had also lighted their torches so as to be quite ready for the escort of any of the playgoers who had to pass to their homes through such regions as were outside the bounds of the New Police.

Further up Drury Lane there was a line of chairs, but only a few bearers were leaning up against the wall, some dozing, others polishing up the brass-work upon their poles. The King’s Head tavern, whose sign was swinging rustily on its iron-work round the corner, sheltered the remainder of the link-boys, as well as some representatives of the New Police, and the sergeant of Mr. Churchill’s company of the King’s Guards.

“’Tis not over yet,” repeated Mrs. Gwyn, giving her shawl, which had become disordered owing to her haste in coming up the Lane, a twitch, and refastening the pin that made the most aggressive breach in the garment less conspicuous. There was a note of indignation in her voice, but it became a note of deep regret in her next sentence. “I might ha’ given myself another five minutes at the ‘Three Bottles.’ A further dash o’ Schnaps would do me no harm. I wonder now did Landlord Creeth send me forth because I chanced to have no more change. He told me that it was nearer to six of the clock than five. If I thought that——” she gave a glance down the Lane in the direction of the Three Bottles tavern, and shook her fist gently but firmly.

Then she resumed her walk toward the playhouse. “Oh, Lord, what profit his Majesty’s lieges can find in hearkening to a play by the long-winded Mr. Beaumont, when they might be diverted by a wicked comedy by Nat Lee, passeth knowledge.

Faugh! Mr. Beaumont is well-nigh as dull as Will Shakespeare, and that’s saying a deal.”

She gave her shawl another twitch, cast another glance back in the direction of the tavern, heaved a sigh that was full of feeling, and sauntered up the Lane toward the playhouse.

She had not gone far before she was overtaken by a rather mature link-boy, who was hurrying to get a light from a brother in the same profession whose torch was in full blaze. She caught his arm as he was brushing past her.

“Danny Wigram, hist!” she cried, struggling to keep up with him. “Hast thou seen my Nell?”

“Your servant, Mother Gwyn; is not your Nell within the playhouse?” said the link-boy. “Prithee, hold me not; I need a light before the quality come forth.”

He shook her off and hailed his brother, and was engaged in igniting his torch when Mrs. Gwyn came beside him again.

“You didn’t see Nelly in the Lane, did ye, Dan?” she inquired.

“Why, sure she’s in the playhouse, as I said before,” replied Dan Wigram. “She’ll be out time enough to get rid of her earnings in the worst possible way, you may swear.”

“In the worst possible way—in the worst possible—what mean you by that, Dan Wigram?” shrilled the woman, craning her head forward, her fingers becoming crooked at the same instant like the talons of a bird of prey in the act of swooping.

The two men laughed. She looked from the one to the other.

“The worst possible—what mean ye? Ah, I know—you mean that she would be ready to give it to one of those impostors that she loves so—one of the soldiers?”

“Nay, worse than that,” said Dan Wigram.

“Worse—worse—what could be worse, you numbskull?”

“I mean that she will give it to her mother, and if that isn’t the worst possible——” Here he dodged adroitly to avoid a blow aimed at the side of his head by the lady.

“Take that, ye rascal!” she shouted.

“Nay, mother, I’ll not take the only thing you give away,” laughed Danny, getting behind his brother, after giving his link a professional twist that caused the woman to be swathed in smoke, suggesting a badly preserved oil-painting of the Flemish School, showing Juno sitting on a cloud.

Mrs. Gwyn spluttered and coughed, so that the words which she tried to utter were inaudible— a fact proving that Dan Wigram was a fortunate man.

“Hold hard, Mother Gwyn—hold hard, I say,” cried Daniel's brother. “Nay, waste not such good words—such bad words, I mean—such good bad words on so ill-favoured a scamp as Dan. He knows not a good mother when he meets one.”

“He’s a foul rascal!” said Mrs. Gwyn. “He’s also—” here she drew upon her recollection—it was somewhat vague—of certain Scriptural analogies employed mainly by the Prophets to meet extreme cases of evil. Then she began to touch lightly upon the family tree of the Wigrams; but Dan’s brother reminded her that in doing so she quite unnecessarily cast a reflection upon himself as well as upon his brother, so she apologised—after she had exhausted herself. “I am ruffled enough waiting for the wench,” she explained to account for her sensitiveness. “Oh, ay; it’s that long-winded Mr. Beaumont—keeping my Nell in the playhouse all this time.”

“Ay, and what’s nigh as bad, keeping the King and my Lady Castlemaine and the rest of the Court within the playhouse too,” remarked Wigram. “Ay, and keeping the link-boys and the mothers of the orange-girls waiting less comfortably outside.”

“Tis not an orange-girl I should be waiting for, but a comedian—one of his Majesty’s Servants—if there was justice in the world,” said Mrs. Gwyn.

“In that case there might be a good many others waiting for her.”

“Ay; she can act, can Nelly—act with the best of ’em.”

“Or the worst of ’em. The best of ’em is the worst of ’em.”

“I take your meaning, Rob. Ay, you have Moll Davis in your eye.”

“Nay, that were high treason, when she’s in the King’s eye.”

“Don’t tell me that the King has eyes, when he favours the ill-favoured Moll Davis and gives no attention to Nell Gwyn. Oh, when I think of Moll Davis I get fairly mad. But there; poor Nell never got her chance; she’s only an orange-girl.”

“You’re right, Mother Gwyn. I’ve always said that if Providence only gave Nell Gwyn a fair chance she’d be no better than Moll Davis.”

“Ah, you always did have a kind heart, Rob.”

While Mrs. Gwyn was wondering if his kind-heartedness would go so far as to induce him to lend her the price of a refreshing glass of hollands, they were joined by a short but splendidly built young fellow who carried an unlighted link.

“Well, mother,” said he; “you have come as usual, I suppose, to make sure of your girl’s earnings. Ah, Nell’s a good daughter.”

Mrs. Gwyn smiled as she looked at the boy—he was not more than twenty years of age—and her smile was near of kin to a snarl.

“These men know a deal about the goodness of our daughters!” she growled, shaking her head about until the curls which she had arranged on each side after the latest fashion of the Court ladies, seemed in imminent danger of dropping off. “Ay, you know a deal, Dick Harraden. If Nell was a good daughter, should I be here waiting to meet her when she leaves the playhouse, tell me that?”

“If you mean that you dursn’t trust her, I say that you’re a—well, that you don’t know Nell as well as I know her,” said Dick vehemently.

“Oh, an ardent lover knows far more about his girl than doth her own mother,” snarled the woman. “I could open your eyes, my honest friend. Trusted! What think you of a daughter who would do as she did two evenings ago?”

Rob Wigram gave a whistle at the question, and the next instant he only escaped by an adroit movement of his head a blow aimed at him by Dick Harraden’s link. He got behind Mrs. Gwyn, and roared with laughter at the way Dick glared at him.

“Tell him, Mother Gwyn, tell him what Nelly did; I know all about it,” he cried.

“I’ll tell him, never fear,” yelled the old woman. “Til tell him, fool of a lover that he is! List, Dick Harraden. What she did was to sell a basket of oranges in the pit of the playhouse, but instead of carrying home the half-crown to her poor old mother, she gave it to a begging soldier who was hanging about the pit door with a story of the battle of Worcester where he lost an arm. That’s the daughter to be trusted quotha!”

"I knew that Nell was to be trusted to do a kindness to a poor devil who had suffered in a good cause,” cried Dick. “Ay, Nell was ever on the side of the soldiers!”

“Moll Davis was ever on the side of the soldiers too,” remarked Bob Wigram, hoping to lead on Mrs. Gwyn to another ebullition.

“She was more frequently on their knees, the baggage!” snarled the woman.

“She’s on the side of the soldiers still,” said Rob, “for isn’t his Majesty the head of the army?”

“He’s the head of the Church as well,” said Dick, with some cynicism. “Oh, ay, the head of the Church. Cast your eye to the top of the spire of St. Giles-in-the-Fields when you pass, and you’ll see there the emblem of his Majesty.”

“I’ll see there a weathercock on the spire,” said Rob.

“Exactly; the best emblem of the King, the head of our Church,” said Dick.

“And a weathercock is the best emblem of fair play that we have, you disloyal grumblers,” cried Mrs. Gwyn. “Yes, that’s why I have hope that the King, who has now a fancy for that baggage, Moll Davis, may one day——”

“By my soul, if I saw the King so much as turn his eyes in the direction of Nell,” cried Dick, “I’d break his head were he fifty times a king.”

“Oranges—oranges—who’ll buy oranges?” came a musical voice from behind them, and there flitted toward them a girl exquisitely shaped, from the crown of her head, where the disordered curls were dancing like sprites, to the soles of her feet—the soles of her shoes were not weather-proof, but her feet and ankles, which were fully revealed by her short skirt, were the daintiest in England—at least they were acknowledged to be so some years later.

She had a few bits of bright colour about her, and as the basket which she carried swept under the light of the links, the oranges reflected a warm blaze that flashed up to her face as she skipped round every group in the Lane, swinging her basket from hand to hand, as though the movement were part of a rhythmic dance set to her cry of “Oranges! oranges! who’ll buy oranges?”

She danced round the group of smoking chair men, swinging her basket so that it knocked the hat off one of them; and the next moment she was among a second group of attendants, scattering them right and left with laughter, then, with one skip, she faced a corporal of the Guards, making a pretty pas and challenging him to a dance, flying off, however, before he could respond, and dealing Dick Harraden a sounding slap on the shoulder.

“Here’s a kind gentleman that will buy a dozen sweet ones, I’ll swear. His face is so glum that a dozen of the sweetest will scarce lighten it,” she cried.

“Give over thy folly, girl. How much hast earned?” said her mother.

“Oh, poor lady! I see plainly that you’ve been cheated,” cried Nell. “You asked for oranges, but you were sold lemons. There’s a whole plantation of lemons in your voice, my good woman. You’ll need a score of my juiciest to recover you. Oranges —oranges—who’ll buy oranges?”

She was flying off when her mother caught her by the shoulder.

“Give over your play-acting, girl, and tell me what you’ve earned?” she shouted.

“One kind word, mother; is that too extravagant an appraisement of what I’ve earned by standing three hours in the cold playhouse?” said the girl, ceasing her merriment in a moment "You deserve all kind words, Nell,” said Dick.

“Ah, Dick, you’ve ever a kind word for your Nell,” she cried, catching his arm and giving it a hug. In a second, however, she had flung his arm away with a laugh, “For your Nell—your knell. Sounds not that doleful? Yes; but ’tis gospel truth; for thou’rt so kind a lad, Dick, I’ll swear that thou’st have a good word to say even if thy knell were to be rung in an hour. Good words—ay, but kind deeds are in thy way also—where are those stockings?”

She had drawn him away from her mother. Dick fumbled under his waistcoat and produced a parcel.

“Here are the stockings, my jewel,” said he, putting the parcel into her hands. She threw down her basket to receive it. “Feel them, Nelly; I’ve had ’em close to my heart since I bought ’em two hours ago.”

“They won’t stand in need of airing, for they’ll be warm enough if they’ve been next your heart, Dick,” cried the girl, unrolling a pair of woollen hose, and feeling the ribs of each with the air of a critic.

“Nay, ’twas the hose that kept my heart warm,” said Dick.

“And now will it be cold when I’ve took ’em?

’Ods bones, Dick, I’ll not have my calves warmed at the expense of thy heart”

“Keep ’em, girl. You know well that the thought thou’rt warm will keep me hot in the coldest weather. Didn’t I swear to bring them?”

“You did, Dick; and I knew I’d have these hose if you had to kill a hosier for them out of the kindness of your heart.”

She had caught his arm, and was swathing it in the stockings, when her mother came up once more, and after following Nell and Dick as they sauntered to and fro, declined to be ignored, effecting her object very forcibly by striding in front of them.

“What is’t the foolish fellow hath given thee?” she cried.

“Oh, mother, what think you of that?”—here she unwound one of the hose—“and that?”—here she unwound the other—“of those?” here she displayed the pair.

“Down on your knees, girl, and thank Heaven for sending you such a lover!” cried the old woman, with an appropriate action of exhortation.

“Yes, I’ll do so when I put on the stockings; ’twould endanger my life to kneel with these.” She had no trouble in showing that the condition of the hose she was wearing was deplorable.

“Ay, there’s some wear in them still, so now fork over your earnings,” said the mother. “Nay,

I’ll e’en count the oranges and find how much you should have.”

“Count them three short, good mother,” said the girl. “I gave three to a poor soldier that had timber toes. His leg was carried off by a grape-shot at the siege of Dunkerque, he said.”

“Twas with the juice of the grape he sought to heal the wound, I’ll swear,” said the mother. “Oh, the rascal—all soldiers are rascals! Thy father was one. They deserve the worst that could befall them.”

“And my poor father got the very worst, I think,” said Nell. “Here’s every penny that I’ve earned. Hasten to the tavern with it as usual.”

She threw her canvas pouch, which, with a rattle of coppers, fell into the old woman’s hands. Her fingers clutched it where it bulged, and she gave a grunt of satisfaction. Without a word she shuffled off in the direction of the swinging sign of the King’s House tavern.

“You go too fast, my good woman; give me back my stockings,” cried Nell, catching her by the shawl.

Her mother stopped and looked at her from head to foot.

“What!” she cried. “Would the hussy take away the very hose from her poor old mother that needs them so sorely? Go hence, thou unnatural child! Never shall it be said that a daughter of mine so treated her mother. Oh, Nell, if an angel had come down and told me that I should have such a daughter, I would not have believed it”

“’Tis not the angels that come from above, but them that come, from below, you’re in the habit of believing,” said Nell, giving her a shake. “Return me those stockings, mother.”

The old woman struck her hand down from her shoulder, and hurried off to the tavern. Nell followed her with menaces. “I’ll have those stockings—I’ll have them, I tell you.”

“Bravo, Nell!” shouted the bystanders.

“You shall have them,” cried the mother, striking her with the hose on the face, and then escaping with an agility that had often stood her in good stead, through the swinging door of the tavern.

Nell made a rush at the door, but the old woman slammed it in her face.

“Let her be, Nelly, let her be,” said Dick, as a roar of laughter came from the group nearest the tavern.

“And my calves are to go cold all the winter so that her inside may be warmed for half an hour with Dutch schnapps?” cried Nell. “Oh, lud, they say that children come from heaven. I wonder what region mothers come from?”

Dick took her by the arm and led her out of sight of the laughing link-boys and chairmen, upon whom the entertainment of a quarrel between Mrs. Gwyn and her daughter never palled.

“Do you take me for a. fool, my girl?” said Dick, when they were alone.

“Don’t force me to answer you truly, Dick.”

“Do you take me for a fool?”

“Can I doubt it, when you swear daily that you love me?”

“Do you fancy that I don’t know your mother, Nell? What’s this?”—he drew from his waistcoat a stocking, imitating her action when showing the first pair to her mother. “And this—and these?”

“What! Oh, Dick, then ’tis true—you killed a hosier and ran away with all his stock—all his stockings. Oh, Dick, you’re a true lover.”

“Ay, a true lover thinks of his mistress’s chilblains. Good lud! Nell, it made me mad when I saw those little feet of yours all misshapen with the blains.”

“They were somewhat like a cluster of red nuts, weren’t they?”

“But now with these”—Dick pointed to the hose—“and these”—here he drew forth a pair of shoes.

Nell at the sight of them gave a cry of delight, and flung herself into the arms of the man with so much vehemence that the shoes went flying to right and left, and there they lay while she had her arms round his neck.

“Dick, Dick, you’re more than a lover—you’re a man. A lover thinks of his mistress’s hose, but a real man thinks of her shoes.” She smothered him with kisses, and then quite suddenly pounced first upon one shoe, afterwards upon the other. “Mind my basket of oranges while I put them on round the corner,” she cried; “there’s a drummer boy of my acquaintance who is waiting for my old ones.”

He caught her by the arms as she was hurrying away.

“Tarry a space, Nell, I’ve somewhat to tell thee,” he said seriously.

“You must haste, for I want to display my finery before the ladies of quality when they are coming from the playhouse,” said Nell.

“I’ll haste. You mind I told you of my cousin, Ralph Harraden?”’

“Ralph the sailor?”

“The same. Well, a company of gentlemen adventurers have provided him with a smart little brig, the Good Adventure, to trade in the Indies, and maybe to fight the buccaneers of the Spanish Main. The great Captain Glossop is to be in command, and Ralph is to be his mate.”

“What, do they want me to adventure my fortune?”

“Ralph sought me yesterday. His brig is ready to sail. He wants me to join his company, and have a try for fortune in pieces of eight”

“And why shouldn’t you, Dick? You’re fond of fighting—too fond of it for London town; but what’s a vice in London town is a virtue on the Spanish Main. Dick, go forth, make a fortune, and return to marry me! Why, ’tis like a chap-book story.”

“Would it be like a chap-book story for me to ask you to marry me to-morrow before I go, my lass?”

“Eh, Dick, isn’t this a sudden notion—oh, lud! to-morrow?”

“Nell, I know your mother, I know this accursed town, and I know this doubly accursed Drury Lane—that’s why—well, that’s why I want to make sure of you.”

Nell burst into laughter as she leant up against the wall of the lane, tossing her new shoes from hand to hand.

“Here’s a pretty fellow,” she cried. “He swears he knows the town, and yet thinks that he can make sure of a woman by marrying her.”

“Ah, Nell, you’re not like the rest of them,” said he.

“I’m just like the rest of them, but in five minutes I'll cease to be so, for Pll be wearing a sound pair of hose. 'I can’t tarry to talk of love and marriage and such-like follies; I must slip on my hose. Watch my oranges.”

She kissed the toe of each shoe in turn to him and then skipped off. Leaving the narrow lane in which she had been talking with Dick, she almost ran into the arms of one of two fine gentlemen who were standing at the foot of the playhouse steps.

“What, Nell, Nell Gwyn, where away so fast?” cried one of the gentlemen, making a grab at her which she smartly eluded.

“I’m in haste, Mr. Killigrew,” she cried, turning only her head round as she spoke. “I’ve an appointment with my hosier, likewise my shoemaker. My boudoir is round the corner.”

“The boudoir in Lewknor Lane?” said Killigrew. He was the manager of the playhouse, and so was very fully acquainted with the locality and its purlieus.

“I’ faith, I’ll go with you, Nelly; you’ll need a waiting-woman,” said the other gentleman.

“Then enter on your duties, my Lord Duke,” cried Nell. “Begin by carrying off my shoes to the nearest cobbler’s.”

The little kicks which she gave, sending first one shoe and then the other flying toward him, were surely daintier than the steps of any of the dancers which Mr. Killigrew had imported for the King’s House (on the recommendation of the King).

While his Grace the Duke of Buckingham was picking up the shoes, Nell had disappeared in the darkness round the comer, and Dick Harraden moved the basket of oranges into the shadow, standing beside it From his place he heard the duke commenting upon the shoes.

“There’s not a lady in St. James’s or Whitehall that might not envy the orange-wench her foot. There’s not one of them could wear this shoe,” affirmed his Grace.

“Ha! Cinderella’s sisters!” cried Killigrew. “Make trial of them all, beginning with my Lady Castlemaine, your Grace.”

The Duke received the name of the Countess of Castlemaine—she had not yet been created Duchess of Cleveland—with an expression which was quite audible to Dick, who, of course, could know nothing of the enmity existing between the Countess and the Duke of Buckingham. But Killigrew, being a member of the brilliant Court circle, was well aware of the relative position of the two, and was never tired of listening to their recrimination: he was a student of the art.

“Look you, Killigrew,” said the Duke, “the King will never forgive me for bringing him to your playhouse to-day. I thought to revenge myself upon that vixen Castlemaine by turning his Majesty’s fancies in the direction of your stage; but, lud! such a pack of dowds! I hoped to find a second Moll Davis within.”

“There’s only one Moll Davis, thank Heaven!” cried Killigrew with true devotional spirit “But all are not dowds within my house. There’s Mrs.

Marshall, for instance. Hath his Majesty ever loved a Presbyterian?”

“Faith, sir, he has circumnavigated all the religions, and is halfway round the other side,” said the Duke. “Here comes Nell Gwyn with her new shoes. Hath his Majesty ever loved an orange-girl?”

The Duke seemed greatly struck by the suggestion. When he had watched Nell Gwyn dancing on the toes of her new shoes in front of Dick Harraden, he thought he had never seen a daintier figure.

“By the Lord Harry, you are not so dull-witted after all,” he cried.

“Oh, your Grace overwhelms me with your flattery,” said Killigrew. Then, turning to Nell, he said, “Come, my girl, trip this way.”

“Nay, you will not find me tripping, my masters; nay, nor slipping neither,” said Nell.

“Come, Nell, give us a saraband—a saraband is the newest dance we have at Court,” said the Duke.

“That’s a sufficient pledge of its unfitness for decent people,” said Nell, keeping at a pretty fair distance from his Grace, though he was affable enough to show a desire to approach her.

“And that’s sufficient to give a zest to it in any lady’s eyes,” said he.

“Ay, but I’m no lady, only a bit of a woman,” said Nell.

“If you’re only a bit, Pll buy a score from the sample, Nelly.”

“Ay, your Grace treats womankind as oranges— to be picked up by the score.”

“And to be found deadly sour.”

“Ay, and then flung into the gutter.”

The Duke clapped his hands and laughed.

“Lord, Killigrew,” he cried, “why can’t you find a poet as witty as Nell to write your plays?”

“Because if a poet was as witty as Nell, he’d be qualified for the more lucrative calling of oranges in the pit,” said a voice from behind. It came from Sir Charles Sedley, who had just left the playhouse. The Duke turned to him and made a remark in his ear, which caused him to elevate his eyebrows and give a laugh as he glanced to where Nell was whispering with Dick Harraden. Dick noticed Sir Charles's glance and stepped between him and the girl, saying in a low tone to her—

“Shuttlecock no more words with them. They mean no good.”

“You big fool!” said Nell. “There's money in the work—I must sell my oranges.”

“If I crack one of their skulls, will there be money in that?” said he fiercely.

“No; but there’s a cell in Newgate, and there’ll be a fool in that,” replied Nell, mocking his tone to perfection, and then picking up her basket and running to the group outside the playhouse. “Buy a sweet orange, kind Sir Charles, to take the bad taste of the play off your mouth,” she cried.

“Ah, Nell, one needs to leave the playhouse to find wit,” laughed Sir Charles.

“What! was my Lady Castlemaine dull?” asked Nell. “Nay, I saw her entering the playhouse. Here she was—hold my basket.”

She thrust the basket upon him before he could refuse it, and amid the roars of laughter of the others, he retained it while the girl gave a perfect imitation of the mincing gait of Lady Castlemaine. “And here she is when the handsome Ensign Churchill bends over her so low that I'll swear some of her paint comes off on the tip of his nose.”

Nell’s simper made even Killigrew roar, though he had been the manager of a theatre for several years. “She simpers and smiles until she sees that the King is laughing at a jest made by his Grace the Duke of Buckingham.”

“Give us the jest, Nell,” cried Sedley.

“Oh, Sir Charles, what do you take me for?” said Nell. “The jest is unfit for any ear but the King’s. Then my lady begins to rail, finding herself slighted.”

“Give us the railing,” cried Buckingham, delighted at the girl’s travesty of his enemy, the Countess of Castlemaine.

“Nay, your Grace, I’m only a poor orange-girl,” replied Nell demurely. “Oh, no, I would not like to endanger my soul by cursing like a lady of quality. I know my place. ‘Faugh! faugh!’ says your Countess—”

“Nay, nay, not mine—not mine, thank Heaven!” interposed the Duke.

“‘Faugh! faugh!’” continued Nell; “‘the place reeks with the smell of oranges—the smell is driving me faint!’ she shrieks. ‘Into my arms you may fall if you let me have another thousand pounds,’ whispers Ensign Churchill.”

“He has had a few thousands from her already,” said the Duke.

“But she only makes a feint of fainting,” continued Nell. “She thinks Mr. Churchill’s offer scarce worth the money, and as no strong waters are handy, she makes use of strong words, and Ensign Churchill is left wondering if he would not do well to look for his captaincy through the favour of the well-favoured Moll Davis rather than through the full flavour of his Lady Castlemaine.”

After a few moments of the most charming swaggering in the world, she snatched up her basket of oranges, crying, “Oranges! who’ll buy my oranges?” as she ran round the crowd.

“’Fore heaven! Nell Gwyn is the best of the mimics,” laughed Sedley.

“Keep her going, Charles—keep her going and the day is ours,” whispered the Duke, at the same instant that Nell was whispering in reply to the remonstrances of Dick Harraden—

“Don’t be a fool, man; can’t you see it is a matter of business with me? I’ve still a score of oranges to sell.”

Dick’s reply was lost in the shout of the Duke of Buckingham.

“Come hither, Nell, come hither, I say. You’ve given us some of the playgoers, now ’tis the turn of the players. Prithee give us the Presbyterian Marshall, in a wicked play—the wickedest play.”

“The wickedest play is sure to be a play of Sir Charles Sedley’s,” said Nell.

“Madam, you flatter me,” said Sir Charles, bowing and sweeping the ostrich feathers of his hat to the ground.

“I must sell my oranges,” said Nell. “The playgoers have awaked from their slumbers. They are coming forth.”

“Nay, this is your hour; give us the Presbyterian,” cried the Duke.

“Then you sell my oranges for me.”

He took the basket from her and began to run through the crowd coming out of the theatre, crying the cry of the orange girls.

“Mind your Grace sells all the rotten ones first,” shouted Nell. “Enter Sir Fopling, swinging his cane in one hand and his feathered hat in t'other.” She had returned to where Sedley and half-a-dozen of the other courtiers were standing. “I must have a feathered hat—ah, this will do for want of a better.” She had snatched Sedley's hat and was swinging it by the brim.

“No, i’faith, you'll have to get other properties,” he cried, doing his best to recover it, but being foiled every time by the adroitness of the girl. As she ran round from one door of the playhouse to another, followed by Sedley, she almost knocked down the Countess of Castlemaine, who was coming out of the first door, and nearly ran into the arms of the King who was coming out of the second.

She made a sweeping courtesy, Sedley’s hat in her hand, in front of the King.

“Odsfish, Killigrew, is this a new comedy that you’re rehearsing?” asked his Majesty. “Faith, sir, ’tis a deal livelier outside your playhouse than within. By the lord, the wench is a pretty one, ay, and an impudent one, I’ll swear.”

“Oranges! oranges! Who’ll buy my oranges?” cried the Duke of Buckingham, running past the King, who leant against one of the pillars roaring with laughter. “Oranges, madam? Like a court lady—not too thin-skinned.”

His Grace was facing Lady Castlemaine and her escort, Ensign Jack Churchill.

“Who is this vulgar buffoon, Mr. Churchill?” sneered the Countess, as Buckingham hastened on round a group of ladies who were getting into their chairs. The lane in the neighbourhood of the playhouse was by this time crowded, the horses of the royal coach were seen round the corner, and the escort of Guards lined the way on each side. But the King showed no sign of going to his coach, and his Majesty’s subjects were too loyal to depart so long as he remained.

“God save the King!” cried Nell, sweeping Sir Charles Sedley’s ostrich feathers upon the steps.

“God save the King! if the prayer does notcome too late,” said his Majesty.

“God save the King, from his Majesty’s hat to his boots, if he only puts his foot down when”— Nell’s voice sank to a whisper as she added— “when my Lady Castlemaine seeks to stand in the Queen’s shoes.”

The King gave a start and his face became grave for an instant “What a taste his Majesty hath for the scum of the gutter!” sneered Lady Castlemaine in a tone that was quite audible to everyone except the King. He seemed suddenly to have become lost in thought “The wench is saucy, Killigrew,” he said. “But, by the lord, she hath a pair of eyes.”

“She is the queen of mimics, sir,” said Killigrew.

“Then God save the queen of mimics!” cried his Majesty, raising his hat.

“And curse the mimic queen!” cried Nell, with a glance in the direction of Lady Castlemaine.

“Oh, lud, she hath put on my hat,” cried Sedley.

“Then by the Lord, sir, there are more brains in the crown than were ever there before,” laughed the King.

“As if anyone ever associated brains with a crown!” said Lady Castlemaine. “Come, Mr. Churchill, this is no place for us.”

“True; ’tis a respectable company,” said Nell, and the King roared with laughter.

“Lud! Killigrew, you must engage the girl. You’ve no comedian in your company to compare with her,” said the King.

Lady Castlemaine stamped furiously on the ground. Ensign Churchill thought it prudent to go off to his company of Guards.

“Doth your Majesty command?” said Killigrew.

“I do command,” said the King. “She could teach the best of your comedians how to act. Sedley shall write her a comedy all for herself.”

“Hadn’t she better come to Whitehall to discuss the characters?” whispered Sedley.

“Bring her thither, Charles,” said the King. “How is it that I failed until now to see the charms of this girl? Lud! to think of the precious time that I have lost!”

“Oranges! oranges! Who’ll buy my oranges?” cried Nell. Passing Dick Harraden she muttered, “My fortune’s made. Mr. Killigrew will engage me to act in the King’s Company.”

“’Tis either a fortune or a huge misfortune,” said Dick.

“Fear not for me. I can take care of myself,” said Nell. “Oranges! Who’ll buy my oranges?”

“If your Majesty tarries any longer you will keep the Court waiting,” said Lady Castlemaine.

“Odsfish, madam, let them wait The duty of lords-in-waiting is to wait,” cried the King.

“You would rather romp in the gutter than reign in Whitehall,” said the Countess.

“The Jealous Woman, a tragedy!” cried Nell, in a most amusing falsetto.

“Infamous jade!” almost shouted the Countess.

“Is your ladyship going to give the company an imitation of the jealous woman or am I?” cried Nell, with a mock courtesy. “I freely admit that I could not approach your ladyship in the part”

The King and Buckingham roared at the pretty impudence of the girl.

“And you can stand by and see a creature like that offer her insults to me!” shrieked the Countess. “Sir Charles, lead me to my chair, if you please. This beggar’s buffoonery pleases only fools and kings.”

Sir Charles Sedley gave her his arm, Nell following for a few yards imitating the gait of the lady, while the crowd laughed its encouragement to her, for Lady Castlemaine was at all times thoroughly hated by the people.

“George,” said the King to Buckingham in a low tone. “George, the wench has got an hold on me —Fm not easy to captivate, as you know.”

“Your Majesty’s heart is adamant,” said the Duke without a smile.

“Ay, as a rule; but now ’tis a butter-pat before the fire of her eyes. Bring her to Whitehall, George, while I try to stem the storm that’s pent up in that chair. Don’t delay, George.”

“Exit my Lady Castlemaine, enter Mistress Eleanor Gwyn! Killigrew, our fortune’s made,” said the Duke, watching the King go toward his coach, while his Majesty’s loyal subjects bowed to the ground, and his Guards presented arms and then closed up on each side of the royal vehicle. “All we’ve to do is to secure Nelly,” he added, as the equipage drove off, followed by half the crowd.

“Ay, that’s all, but ’twill be enough to tax your forces to the utmost,” said Killigrew, shaking his head.

“Psha! an orange girl!” said his Grace, going to where Nell was standing, counting her money. “Give me your hand, Nell, our fortune’s made within the hour!” he cried.

“Three and a groat—faith, that may be a fortune to a Duke, but ’tis poor trade for an orange-girl,” said Nell.

“In another week you’ll have as many thousands,” said he. “I’ve a message to you from the King. But you’ll not believe it”

“I’d believe anything about the King except that he has done a wise act,” said Nell.

“He has fallen in love with the prettiest creature in England.”

“Oh, I’d believe that: there's not much wisdom in that”

“He has e'en fallen in love with thee, Nell, and bids thee sup with him at Whitehall. There's luck for you!”

“Luck? Where's the luck to me?”

“Deuce take it, girl! you wouldn't call it ill-luck?”

“Oh, no; it would only be ill-luck if I did the King’s bidding.”

“You mean to say that you—you—Nell Gwyn, the orange-girl——”

“Tell your King that Nell Gwyn is a vendor of wholesome oranges, but there's no forbidden fruit in her basket”

“You tell me—”

“I tell you that you're spoiling my trade, my Lord Duke. I've no mind to exchange my trade for another.”

She picked up her basket and ran into one of the side-streets, calling, “Oranges—who’ll buy my oranges?”

The Duke was amazed. He had found Moll Davis so obedient a subject of his Majesty's a short time before, that he could not believe that Nell Gwyn would display the elements of disloyalty. At last a thought seemed to strike him.

“She’s deeper than we think,” said he. “She knows how to put a value on herself. She’ll make her own terms.”

He went slowly in the direction taken by the King’s carriage. He did not doubt that the orange-girl would follow him.

Nell did not follow him. Someone else did— someone for whom he did not look; for it so happened that Dick Harraden had overheard every word of the message which he had given to the girl, and the moment that the Duke had disappeared, Dick dropped his link and picked up a stool that stood outside a vintner’s door. He struck it on the stones, and detached one of its legs which he picked up. As the vintner rushed out of his tavern, Dick ran off, shouting in reply to the man’s expostulations—

“Pm only going to beat a dog round the corner.”

He disappeared a moment before Nell returned.

“What was that noise?” she inquired.

“That rascal, Dick Harraden, has e’en smashed my best stool,” replied the man.

“Wherefore did he do so?” she inquired anxiously.

“The devil only knows—he wanted a cudgel to beat a dog, he said,” replied the man.

“Which way did he go—quick, man, tell me?” she cried,' grasping him by the arm.

Before the man could reply there was the noise of a scuffle, and shouts, and then came a long cry—

“Murder! murder!”

Nell threw down her basket and rushed in the direction whence the sound of the tumult came. Before she had gone a dozen steps, however, Dick returned. The Duke of Buckingham’s plumed hat was on the top of the stool-leg which he brandished.

She caught him, crying—

“Dick, Dick, what fool’s trick is this? What have you done?”

“What any man would do!” panted Dick. “The Duke—the King’s jackal—I heard him—all he said to you—his head is pulp—the King’s jackal!”

“Dick, for pity’s sake, take thyself off—the King’s Guards are coming for thee at the double,” cried a link-boy, running up.

“Let ’em come,” said Dick, turning up the sleeve of his jacket, then throwing the Duke’s hat on the ground and setting his foot on it.

“Dick, don’t be a fool,” cried Nell. “Don’t end your life here. The ship—your cousin’s brig——”

Dick looked anxiously round.

“Lord! Nell, if I could but get safe aboard!”

“You shall—you must,” said Nell, and she too looked anxiously round. “You must—but how— how—?”

“Ah, how?” he asked. The tramp of the Guards was heard.

“How—how? I have it—the playhouse.”

Before he understood what she meant, she had forced him up the steps to the door of the playhouse. “Fly by the door at the back, and lock it when you get through,” she whispered. He had just time to put his arm round her and kiss her before Jack Churchill, at the head of a company of Guards, appeared. Nell closed the door of the playhouse and came down a step or two.

“Which way did the fellow go?” cried Churchill, halting his men.

Some of the crowd pointed in one direction, some in quite the opposite. Churchill was beginning to threaten them for fooling him, when the vintner shouted—

“Try the playhouse, my lord. The rascal smashed my best stool.”

The crowd hooted him.

“Advance upon the playhouse and search it,” commanded Churchill, leading the way up the steps.

He found himself face to face with Nell.

“Stand aside!” he cried.

“No, no, Ensign—I mean Captain—how could the fellow be in the playhouse?” said Nell.

“Enter the playhouse,” shouted the officer.

“Oh, Captain Churchill—Colonel Churchill—you are bom to be a great commander,” said Nell in her most seductive voice. She wanted to gain time for her lover. “I saw a fellow enter the door of the tavern opposite.”

“Into the playhouse, in the devil’s name,” shouted Churchill to his sergeant, trying to push past the girl.

The men rushed at the door. She struggled as if to prevent them.

“Oh, General Churchill—Marshal Churchill— stay with me,” she cried.

Naturally this made him the more eager to enter, and in a few seconds every soldier had entered the playhouse. When the last had gone through the door, Nell Gwyn slipped her hand through the opening, withdrew the great key from the inside, then noiselessly closed the door and locked it from the outside. She laughed and held up the key for the crowds to see. They cheered her, guessing that she had locked Churchill and the Guards in the playhouse. At the same instant Lady Castlemaine’s chair was borne to the foot of the steps, and her ladyship got out amid the jeers of the crowd. The sounds of this demonstration mingled with shouts from within the playhouse— shouts and the battering of halberts against the door.

“Where is Mr. Churchill? Where is the officer of the Guards?” cried Lady Castlemaine.

“He is rehearsing a new comedy in the playhouse, ‘The Way not to Catch Him’ is the title,” cried Nell.

Then at the window above the door Ensign Churchill appeared.

“The girl has locked the door; someone wrest the key from her,” he shouted. The crowd roared. Lady Castlemaine swore.

“Ah, you’re born to be a great commander, Ensign Churchill—Sergeant Churchill—but you’re outmanoeuvred this time, Corporal Churchill. I hope your garrison’s victualled, Grenadier Churchill.”

Nell stood beneath the window holding up the key. The Countess of Castlemaine then did a foolish thing. She rushed up the steps and ran at Nell Gwyn. But Nell, easily evading her, hurried down the steps and, entering the Countess’s chair, was swiftly borne away by a dozen stout arms of her friends, the link-boys, bowing graciously to right and left, and before she disappeared round a corner shaking the key quite pleasantly out of the window of her chair.

At the very hour that night when the King was roaring with laughter at the downcast face of Ensign Churchill, the brig Good Adventure dropped down the river with Dick Harraden standing on the high castle astern waving a farewell to Nell, whom he but dimly saw on the shore.

CHAPTER II.

THE COMEDY AT WHITEHALL.

“Praise Heaven, that sleepy thing is over!” cried Mistress Frances Stuart as the last notes of the pavone died away through the great salon of Whitehall. The musicians in the minstrels’ gallery had taken the time of the pavone very slowly, and Frances Stuart held all slow dances in abhorrence. But she held in even greater abhorrence the graceful promenade round the salon which was being led by the Countess of Castlemaine. Therefore she faced the King and made an obeisance in her most fascinating manner, saying—

“A boon, Oh King! As a reward for having walked through the pavone, may we not have blind man’s buff now?”

“As you will, child,” said the complaisant King, patting her cheek. He could never refuse the girl anything.

“Huzza!” loosing the silken sash that clung to her dainty waist. “Huzza! Blind man’s buff at last The King will be the blind man as usual, I suppose.”

"As every King has need to be who would live in peace in Whitehall,” said the King. "Gadzooks, I’m beginning to think that the whole duty of a King is to know when to keep his eyes shut.”

"Ay, sir, and his mouth shut into the bargain,” said Sir Charles Sedley.

"Eyes close, but a purse open, that’s the true bearing of a monarch, is it not, my Lady Castlemaine?” said the Duke of Buckingham, as the Countess walked past with Mr. Jack Churchill, now Captain of the Guards.

"Doubtless,” replied Lady Castlemaine, "assuming that the advancement of the Duke of Buckingham is the raison d’être of a sovereign.”

“Would your Majesty prefer battledore and shuttlecock? Tis all the same to me,” said Mistress Stuart "By the beard of old Rowley, his Majesty needeth not battledore and shuttlecock as long as the Duke of Buckingham and Lady Castlemaine are exchanging sallies,” said the King.

"Captain Churchill, let me bind your eyes,” cried the girl, approaching the young officer with her sash.

“Come, Churchill,” said the King; "from all that I hear you need only the kerchief on your eyes to complete your likeness to the little god Cupid. ' In all other respects you are fully equipped.”

“If your Majesty commands,” said Churchill.

“’Fore heaven, sir, his Majesty cannot control Cupid, much less command his little godship,” laughed the King.

“If quips went to the equipment of a Cupid, Mr. Churchill would be well supported by this company,” remarked Sedley.

“And no one would be a bit the wiser,” said Buckingham.

“Least of all Mr. Churchill,” said the King. “But luckily, Mr. Churchill was bom wise,” he added with a smile that meant a good deal, in the direction of Lady Castlemaine.

“And he shows his wisdom by closing his eyes before Mistress Stuart lest he be blinded by so much beauty,” said Churchill, as he submitted to the silk scarf which Frances Stuart proceeded to bind about his eyes. Captain Churchill was wise enough to perceive that la belle Stuart, as the courtiers termed her, would one day possess as much influence at Whitehall as Lady Castlemaine had at her command.

“Fain would we hope that this new play will prove more diverting than did Mr. Dryden’s comedy which we had in the hall to-night,” said the Countess, “You are not fortunate in your plays, Mr. Killigrew, or for that matter, in your players.”

“I am most unfortunate, so are the play-writers, and the play-actors, if my Lady Castlemaine disapproves,” said Killigrew, smiling to show that he meant only to pay a compliment, not to tell the truth.

“Have your players departed, or are they supping in the kitchens?” asked the Countess.

“Madam, when they leave the stage they relieve me of all further responsibility on their behalf,” replied the Master of the Revels.

“I dare swear that you would not like to be responsible for that brazen hussy whom you dragged from her orange - peelings and set before the footlights,” said her Ladyship.

“Silence for the incantation,” cried Frances Stuart, holding up her hand as she turned young Churchill about, intoning the doggrel rhymes addressed to the blinded one in blind man’s buff. In another instant she had gathered up her skirts and skipped away, leaving Churchill to his own resources.

“Well, you’ve succeded in bringing Nell Gwyn to Whitehall,” whispered Sedley to Buckingham, as they flattened themselves against the wall close to where a splendid purple velvet curtain separated the great salon from the supper-room. “Tis an achievement—bringing the horse to the water.”

“Tis more than that,” said Buckingham. “We brought the horse to the water a year ago when we brought the King to see Nell’s mimicry.”

“On the night when you got a broken pate,” suggested Sedley.

“Even so. That was bringing the horse to the water; but now we have brought the water to the horse.”

At this moment the pair of whisperers were compelled to flatten themselves still closer against the wall, for young Captain Churchill came cautiously toward them with outstretched hands, and he would certainly have reached them had not the Countess of Castlemaine, who was standing with Killigrew beside one of the pillars that supported the ceiling, ventured to make an audible comment on the distrait mood of the King. In an instant the blindfold officer had turned and caught her Ladyship by the sleeve, and tearing the scarf from his eyes, set about blindfolding her, whispering—

“The world is to be afforded a few minutes’ respite from the havoc wrought by my Lady’s eyes.”

A year had passed since the King had first been made aware of the fascinations of Nell Gwyn— since the Duke of Buckingham had his head broken by a certain Dick Harraden for having offered an insult to the orange girl. By the King's command, Nell had been received into Killigrew’s company of comedians, and had speedily become the greatest favourite with the town. Thus it came about that, when his Majesty’s servants came to act a play by the ingenious Mr. Dryden, for the diversion of the Court at Whitehall, Mistress Eleanor Gwyn went also, and was honoured by a command to sup with the Court, though the Countess of Castlemaine was not aware of the fact, but was under the impression that she was supping with the other members of the company.

As for the King himself, he was not sure that this merry orange-girl turned actress meant to accept his invitation. He had his doubts about her, and so he was, as Lady Castlemaine had noticed, somewhat distrait.

His Majesty certainly looked a trifle anxious, as he went across the room on tiptoe to where Killigrew stood with Sedley.

“What the devil is keeping Nell Gwyn in her dressing-room all this time?” he inquired.

“I’ll go and find out for your Majesty,” cried Sedley promptly, but before he had taken a step, the blindfold Lady Castlemaine had swooped among them, scattering the group in all directions.

“She is but purblind,” remarked Sedley, straightening his disordered waistcoat.

“Doth Nell fancy that she must wash all her -paint off before mixing with the ladies of the Court?” asked the King.

“Nay, she may be an ignorant orange girl turned actress, but Pll swear that she hath no fancy so foolish as that,” replied Killigrew.

“She is most likely giving her face an extra daub to put herself on a level with the most modest of the Court ladies,” said Sedley. “I venture to think that your Majesty would do well to keep the bandage over my Lady Castlemaine’s eyes when Nell appears,” he added.

“Ay, and over her mouth as well,” said the King.

At this point the lady to whom they referred made another rush at the group; the King, however, adroitly stooped low as she swung her arms round, and she, missing the King, tottered up against Sedley, who nimbly twisted his body so that she almost fell into Killigrew’s arms. He dexterously avoided her, however, and she whirled up against a sofa on which she collapsed, amid the merriment of the Court and the shrieks of laughter of Frances Stuart.

She tore the bandage from her eyes, and flinging it on the floor trampled on it viciously.

"Tis a cursed game—fit only for fools or kings,” she cried.

"Both have been playing it to-night,” remarked the King.

"You play the King very prettily,” she sneered.

"And your Ladyship plays the other part as naturally as though you were born to it,” said the King.

"I allow that I’m fool enough for your Majesty’s Court,” she cried.

“But you’re not fool enough to leave it,” said his Majesty.

"If I were to leave it, I would not leave much wisdom behind me,” said she.

"Nay, nor anything else she could lay her hands on,” remarked Buckingham with shocking audibility.

"Well, if you like not blind man’s buff, suppose we try kiss in the ring?” suggested la belle Stuart.

The King went slowly up the room, unnoticed by the Countess and her circle, and when he reached the door between the pillars, he made a sign to the two pages, who opened the door. He passed quietly out, after glancing over his shoulder to see if his action was observed. Buckingham only had seen him.

"Kiss in the ring—ay, or outside the ring,” said the Duke. “Methinks the ring takes all the zest out of the kiss.”

“Is that the experience of your Duchess?” asked Lady Castlemaine.

“Heaven forbid that a husband should venture to say what the experience of his wife hath been. Doth not your Ladyship say ‘Amen* to that prayer?” and his Grace turned away to Killigrew, lest Lady Castlemaine might have an answer ready.

“There’s another game called ‘Hunt the Slipper,’ ” said Frances with her accustomed insistence. She could not see any fun in that form of battledore and shuttlecock at which the Duke and his enemy, the Countess, were engaged. “I’ll show you how ’tis played,” she continued and without a moment’s hesitation she squatted on the floor to explain the mysteries of hunting the slipper. Should anyone wish to know what this beautiful tom-boy was like one need only look at the reverse of a copper coin. The original figure of Britannia was drawn from her as a model. Her portrait has for over two hundred years been the most popular in the world.

But while she was making the courtiers about her laugh, the Duke of Buckingham had once more got beside Killigrew.

“The mother will not fail us at the last moment?” he whispered.

“Your Grace may rest assured,” replied Killigrew.

“But if she should come hither drunk?”

“She’ll not do so. I have taken good care of that”

“You have remonstrated with her? Psha! logic is wasted on a drunken woman.”

“Not when ’tis the logic of a lock and key.”

“Wherefore is supper delayed? Where is the King?” came the loud voice of Lady Castlemaine behind the conspirators.

“Is his Majesty not in the salon?” asked the Duke innocently.

“He left secretly and you saw him go,” cried the Countess.

“If your Ladyship saw him go, and if I saw him go, he can scarcely be said to have gone secretly,” said the Duke.

“Why has he gone?” she said in a low voice, facing the Duke.

“Doubtless to turn the spit in the kitchen,” was the reply. At the same moment there came the sound of a loud laugh behind the heavy curtain.

“’Tis not possible that your company have invaded the supper-room, Mr. Killigrew?” said the Countess.

“Nay, your Ladyship, they know their place,” he replied.

“That’s no surety that they will keep to it,” said she, and once more a burst of laughter came from beyond the curtains.

Lady Castlemaine stamped on the floor, then she rushed to the curtains and flung them back to right and left on their rods. The act disclosed the long supper-table in the room beyond. It was blazing with lights and flowers, and at one side sat Mistress Eleanor Gwyn gorgeously dressed, holding out her glass to be filled by the King, who stood like a lackey behind her chair.

“A pretty comedy, truly!” cried Lady Castlemaine, her face blazing and her eyes flashing. “My lords and ladies, the compliment which his Majesty hath paid to us in leading a vagabond orange-wench to our supper-table is quite in keeping with the King’s sense of propriety.”

“Oh, lud! when my Lady Castlemaine discourses on propriety ’tis a comedy in itself,” cried Nell.

The Countess took a step toward her, and Nell took up her glass of wine in a suggestive way. Her ladyship thought it well to pause. She turned in a torrent of anger from Nell to the King.

“You can stand by and hear that creature insult your Court!” she cried. “The honour of the King—”

“Silence, madam,” cried the King. “The King can look after his own honour—such of it as survives. Lady Castlemaine, I am tired to the death of these fishwife brawlings. What is your complaint, madam?”

"Think you not that ’tis a slight to your Court to ask us to sit down at the same table as that woman?” she cried angrily.

“If I don’t object I’m sure that you needn’t,” remarked Nell.

“Hold your tongue. One does not argue with a creature who has lost all sense of what is decent,” shrieked Lady Castlemaine.

“If that were so the Countess of Castlemaine would have no opponents,” said Nell quite pleasantly.

“Lady Castlemaine,” said the King, “have you an objection to take your seat at this table—yes or no?”

“I tell you that ’tis an insult——” began her Ladyship.

“Yes or no?” cried the King.

Nell laughed. “The idea of thinking that a woman will stop short at ‘Yes’ or ‘No’!” she muttered.

“I say that a creature——” resumed the Countess.

“Yes or no?” shouted the King.

“Yes, yes—a thousand times yes,” she shrieked.

“Then in the devil’s name make up your own supper-party and we shall go hence,” said his Majesty. Then turning to Nell Gwyn he bowed, offering her his hand, saying, “Madam, I ask your pardon for this unseemly interruption. We shall finish our supper in another apartment”

Nell bent to the very floor before his Majesty and then accepted his hand. He led her into the great salon, Buckingham, Sedley, and Killigrew standing to one side and bending low as she passed with the King.

“I do hope that that woman won’t fancy that I’ve run away from her—I haven’t, you know,” said Nell, glancing round to where Lady Castlemaine stood.

“We shall sup here,” said the King. “Sir Charles, pray give orders to have a table laid here. This is the chief apartment for to-night”

“If the King sups in the antechamber ’tis the chief apartment in the palace,” said Sir Charles as he went to the door.

“My lords, ladies, and gentlemen,” said Buckingham smiling, and singling out for his smile the Countess of Castlemaine, “you will sup in the antechamber— this room is reserved for the King.”

“We thank his Majesty for acknowledging our right to exclude his Majesty’s friends from our circle,” said the Countess, and Buckingham could not help acknowledging that she had displayed great adroitness in escaping from a difficult position.

“Good-bye, good people,” said Nell, kissing her hand as the courtiers followed Lady Castlemaine through the curtained arch into the supper-room. “Good-bye. Eat all you please, but carry nothing away in your pockets. What, is that the great Commander Churchill?” she continued as Captain Churchill bowed low to her in passing. “What, only a captain still, in spite of his prowess in carrying the playhouse by assault a year ago?”

“That were a lesser feat than has been accomplished by Mistress Eleanor Gwyn, who has taken by storm the hearts of all the playgoers,” said Churchill with another bow.

“The rascal,” whispered Buckingham to Sedley, who returned to the room at the moment. “He is trimming his sails for the way the wind will blow next.”

“In another year all the Court will be at her feet,” said Killigrew.

“Then, by the lord, sir, all the Court will be at the prettiest pair of feet in England,” cried Sedley, pointing out to the servants, who entered with a small table, where it was to be placed. The Duke approached Nell with a smile.

“What,” cried she, “is’t possible that that is his Grace of Buckingham? Oh, my lord Duke, I must e’en run my finger over the dent in your skull made when last we met by that wicked fellow, Dick Harraden.”

She hurried to where the Duke was standing and made the attempt to shift his wig. He ran behind a chair.

“You’ll have trouble in finding that particular crack, Nell; his skull is like a garden bed after a long drought—’tis cracked all over,” laughed the King.

“Which side was it at—this or that, your Grace?” said Nell with comical seriousness.

The Duke caught her hand.

“Let me place it where a far deeper wound hath been made by your beauty, madam,” said he, laying her hand over his heart, and casting a sentimental look into her eyes.

She gave his waistcoat a slap with the back of her hand.

“Padding—padding, your Grace—nothing but padding,” she cried.

“Ah, madam, what surgeon can heal the rent made here?” he said.

“Did your Grace try a sempstress?” she asked seriously.

“Alas, madam—”

“A sempstress is the chirurgeon of wounded waistcoats. If I had a needle and thread I could repair the rent in a twinkling.” She ran to the table which the servants were laying for supper. “You’re a pair of fumblers,” she cried, catching up the basket of forks and hastening to place them. Suddenly she stopped, crying, “By the lord, there are a dozen of them—and silver—silver! I hope you didn*t put yourselves about because I was coming.”

“Even so great a luxury as a fork is not too much to offer to you, Nelly?” said the King.

“Nay, your Majesty, I’m too well bred, I hope, to notice a single fork—we often have a fork on our table at home; but forks all round—oh, here come the victuals at last” The servants entered bearing silver dishes. Nell seated herself and hastily removed the cover of the dish nearest to her. “It smells better even than the cookshop at the comer of Lewknor Lane, though Pm not sure if it’s fish, flesh, fowl, or Scotch collops, which include all three. Never mind! Pll take it on trust. We are just the right number for a nice supper-party—three gentlemen and one lady. You’re the gentlemen—I’m the lady. I think, you know, that a party is pleasant in proportion to the absence of ladies. One is quite enough, and I like being that one.” She started up. “Oh lud! if I didn’t forget to carry hither the glass of champagne wine that I had scarce tasted. If I don’t hasten, those cormorants in the next room will have finished it.”

"Nay, the servants—” began the King.

"They’d drink it themselves and then say the glass was empty from the first.”

She ran to the curtains, swung them apart and hastened to the place where she had been sitting. She picked up a glass. It was Jack Churchill’s.

"Just what I fancied,” she cried, holding it up to show that it was empty. “My dear Captain Churchill, if champagne bottles were forts, you’d be a marshal in a week.”

She patted him pleasantly on the head.

“Leave this room, madam,” thundered Lady Castlemaine.

"You don’t fancy I meant to take it with me, my good woman,” said Nell.

"Your good woman! Insolent hussy!” hissed her Ladyship.

"She objects to be called a good woman,” said Nell. "Well, that shows that she has a conscience anyway. Oh, your Majesty, those wine-bibbers,” she added, returning to the other table.

"There should be no lack of wine here,” said the King.

“Nay, but my own particular glass. Well, I’m glad that it went to that young gentleman. He’s a soldier.”

“You played him a sorry trick a year ago, when the Duke’s head was broken by that sweetheart of yours, Dick—Dick something or other,” said Sedley. “Have you seen aught of that fiery fellow?”

In an instant Nell had become grave. She laid down the glass from which she was about to drink and shook her head.

“Come, Nelly, is not this wine as good as the last? Why have you laid down your glass?” cried the King.

“Ah, your Majesty, there is no wine like the first we taste in life—the first sweet draught of wine or love—there is no second.”

“I’ faith, that sounds suspiciously like a bit from a comedy,” said Buckingham.

“It is a bit from a comedy—this comedy, nay, this tragedy of life,” said Nell. The pause that followed was broken by the sound of a quarrel taking place in the supper-room.

“It seems as if a tragedy were being played in there,” remarked the Duke.

“Odsfish, we cannot hear each other conversing, and I would not miss a word that comes from Nelly’s lips,” said the King, as the sounds of the bickering increased. "Bid them abate their noise, Charles.”

Sir Charles Sedley parted the curtains, displaying several members of the supper-party angrily gesticulating and all talking at the same moment. Nell put her fingers in her ears.

“His Majesty commands silence,” cried Sedley.

“Oh, ’fore Gad, no; his Majesty is not fool enough to look for silence—no, only something less than an earthquake,” said the King.

Sedley closed the curtains and. returned to the table.

“What,” said Nell, “can gentlefolks not remain in one room without quarrelling like fishwives?”

“Every lady hath a fish-basket ready to sling on her arm when the time comes,” laughed the King.

“Then even a Court lady does not cease to be a woman?” said Nell.

“Even the King’s cat will run after a mouse,” cried Sedley.

“’Snails, sirs, Whitehall Palace’s no better than the Widow O’Lannigan’s house in Lewknor Lane,” exclaimed Nell, reflectively.

“To affirm that ’tis as bad were to cast a reflection on the widow’s home,” said the King. “But what in particular happened at the widow’s?”

“You see she’s suspected of being an Irishwoman,” said Nell confidentially.

“What were the grounds for the suspicion?” asked the Duke.

“Well, her husband was the best fighter in the Liberties of St Giles,” replied Nell.

“That’s proof positive of her Irishry,” laughed his Majesty.

“’Tis understood that the widow and her husband are descended from the kings of Ireland, and on account of her royal descent she calls her house in Lewknor Lane, Blackhall—that’s to prevent strangers from mistaking it for Whitehall. And it has a meaning too, for she sells small coal, so ’tis truly a Black hole or a Blackhall. She says she’d be Queen of England to-day, if only the King she’s descended from had thought it worth his while to add England to his other possessions.”

“Thank Heaven his Majesty went no further,” said the King.

“If he had, your Majesty would be selling small coal in Lewknor Lane to-day,” said Nell solemnly.

“And by my soul, madam, I believe that I would lead a quieter life—perhaps a longer life,” said the King sententiously.

“Oh, the length of your Majesty’s life would depend altogether upon your nimbleness in avoiding crockery when it’s flying through the air,” cried Nell.

“ Crockery—flying—”

“Oh, there’s times in Lewknor Lane when the crockery’s flying through the air as thick as snowflakes. In the Widow O’Lannigan’s the snow-flakes are mostly oyster-shells—ay, and sometimes oranges —oranges that have begun to grow beards—the best oranges are quite bald and beardless.”

“I prefer for myself those that have no need of a barber.”

“Then there’s the small coal—’tis a great temptation to have small coal lying about handy.”

“Ay, ’tis an inflammable material.”

“Especially when French brandy is hovering about in bulk, and that’s how it comes that the Widow O’Lannigan walks about with a bandage across her forehead and her left eye in a sling.”

It seemed as if some people on the other side of the curtain were bent upon emulating the Widow O’Lannigan. The sounds of an altercation might have been heard in the tilt-yard. Nell looked with lifted eyebrows in the direction of the curtains.

“They’ll quiet down. Go on with your story,” said the King.

“Well, you see, the widow was well-favoured, but so long as Larry was alive it led to nothing—he was known to be such a good fighter. But when he died, Hal Havers, the chairman, took to visiting the widow; but he had a wife who was an orange girl, and she got jealous, so one day—the day after the fire at the King’s Head tavern, when the brandy had been running down the kennel in streams—she made a call upon the widow. The conversation was not conducted in whispers. She told the widow that she was no better than she need be, and the widow told her that she was a good deal worse than she should be. After that they began to call each other names. ‘You’re as black-hearted as the coal you sell,’ cried the one. ‘You’re as rank as your own oranges,’ shrieked t’other. ‘You’re a longfaced Puritan,’ shouted the widow. ‘And you’re an Irish hag,’ yelled t’other. With that the widow made a rush for the empty bottle and sent it——”

As Nell picked up a goblet to show what the widow’s action had been, there was a crash of glass at the other side of the curtains, followed by shrieks. Nell lay back in her chair roaring with laughter. Sir Charles Sedley ran to the curtains and flung them aside, disclosing the members of the supper-table violently gesticulating, Lady Castlemaine pointing to Frances Stuart, who in her turn was pointing a derisive forefinger of one hand at her ladyship, while holding with her other hand a napkin to her forehead. The table was littered with broken glass.

“Silence—for Heaven’s sake, silence!” cried the King. “Ladies and gentlemen—if any such are present—let me implore of you—nay, I insist on silence! Lady Castlemaine—Miss Stuart——”

“’Twas that cat whose vile tongue——” began the Countess.

“She called me a long-faced Puritan!” shrieked Frances.

“And she told me that I was an Irish hag!” yelled her Ladyship.

“And so you are,” screamed Frances.

“You are—”

But at this point both shrieked together, so that it was impossible to say with any degree of certainty what Mistress Stuart appeared to be in the eyes of the Countess of Castlemaine, or what name Mistress Stuart considered applicable to the Countess.

In the other room Nell Gwyn remained lying back in her chair, crying to Sedley—

“Lewknor Lane! Lewknor Lane! The Widow O’Lannigan might take lessons at Court Whitehall is but Blackhall, and glass is as brittle as crockery!”

“For the Lord’s sake, Sedley, dismiss the company, and lock the doors when they have departed,” said the King, after a vain attempt to make himself heard. “George, for Heaven’s sake, patch up an armistice between the women. I hope you won’t find them more difficult to deal with than the Dutch,”

The two courtiers hastened to the supper-room, and closed the curtains behind them. The King stood at the side of Nell Gwyn’s chair until the clamour decreased and faint echoes of the women’s voices sounded down the long corridors. Then came silence, after the noise of the locking of the door.

The King sighed and seated himself wearily.

“Ah, your Majesty need not ask me for a story of Lewknor Lane again,” said Nell. “Your Majesty has been living there all the while.”

“Even so, my girl,” said he. “The difference between a palace and a hovel is merely a question of whitewash.”

“Ah, your Majesty is to be pitied.”

“Do you fancy that my subjects in Lewknor Lane pity me?”

“I could tell you what a good many of your Majesty’s subjects are saying just now; but that would be the truth, and ’tis well known that the reason why the walls of a palace are built so thick is to prevent the truth ever getting within them.”

“I do not mind the truth when it’s spoke by pretty lips.”

“How can you say that when you’ve had no experience of it?”

“Let me have this novel experience now.”

“Your Majesty wishes to know what your subjects are saying about you?”

“Even so.”

“I will tell you what I overheard a man say to another two days ago. ‘Doth the King fancy that the soul of Oliver Cromwell became smoke when the ashes of the regicides were scattered to the winds?’ he asked.”

The King sprang from his seat and retreated until he was between the two figures clad in armour and holding great two-handed swords, which stood on each side of the door. It seemed to Nell that he had instinctively sought the protection of those two dumb champions. He stood with clenched hands between the armoured figures for some moments. Then suddenly he appeared to recover himself.

“Psha! the English people had enough of Cromwell and the hypocrisy of the Roundheads. Merry England is merry England once again, and the people like it.”

He spoke in the tone of one who tries to make himself believe a comforting statement “Ay, they like it till their stomachs are empty,” said Nell. “Like the children at a fair, they are mighty pleased with the jugglers until they become hungry. When the stomach is empty of food the heart is empty of merriment There are many men alive who fought on the King’s side.”

“And their sons would fight on the King’s side again.”

“Would they? They have seen their fathers ask for alms in the streets—they have themselves felt a pinch in their own guts because their fathers fought for the King. Such as these are not the men to enter with zest into the King’s quarrel.”

“You speak the truth—you speak the truth—I know it,” said the King, in a low voice.

“I know it, I am one of the people,” said Nell Gwyn. “I hear the people talk without restraint. They love the King well, but they love England better. If you would have the strong sons of the old soldiers on your side, you must treat their fathers well—not leave them to starve. Oh, your Majesty, a soldier of the King begging in the streets—an old soldier whose honourable scars are seen by all the world through his tattered garments—oh, there is no such pitiful sight in all the world.”

The tears were running down her cheeks as she stood up before him with clasped hands.

“You are right, girl—I know that you are right. But I—what can I do? I am only the King.”

“You fling away thousands and tens of thousands of guineas upon the creatures of the Court You are King enough to arrest the flow of that golden stream. You are man enough to turn its course in another direction.”

“Tell me what to do to keep the soldiers on my side—to keep England on my side.”

“Bid your architect set up a home for those old soldiers who served your family so well—a hospital on the bank of our river where the sons of soldiers can see their fathers ending their days in warmth and comfort, and seeing that, be ready to fight to the death on behalf of the King. Are you King enough—are you man enough to do this?”

“I am King enough—man enough I’ll do it if you’ll stay by my side to see it done.”

“Seek to make no such conditions with me, sir. Build not the hospital on such a foundation.”

“Nay, you will stay with me and see it done. You will be happy with me, Nell.”

He tried to seize her hand, but she evaded his grasp. She laughed as she said—

“The picture of domestic happiness which I saw beyond that curtain was not an alluring one.”

“By the Lord, you shall stay,” he cried, approaching her. She slipped to the other side of the table.

“Build the hospital,” she cried. “It will stand when your palace of Whitehall is in dust. That is my last word.”

She went toward the door. He reached it first and locked it, withdrawing the key.

"You will stay to save the King,” he cried.

"I will go to save my own soul,” she said. “Give me the key, sir!”

He caught both her wrists, but she freed herself in a moment, and burst through the curtains between the rooms. Then she remembered that she had heard the door of the supper-room being locked. She stood at bay for a moment He approached her.

"Stay—stay,” he cried imploringly. "Stay—and you shall know what life means.”

"And, by the Lord, you shall know what death is,” she said, rushing past him to where the armoured figures stood. In a second she had snatched one of the great swords from the iron gauntlet to which the long haft was fastened. She swung the weapon with both hands aloft "Now, sir, open that door,” she said He did not flinch.

“Not I,” he said. “Tis not the first time that a naked sword has been raised above the head of the King of England, and still I am King.”

"And I am Nell Gwyn,” she cried, swinging the sword and bringing it down, not upon the King’s head, but upon a panel of the door. She swung it again, and the mighty blade crashed into the panels. The third blow smashed the panel and shore its way through the woodwork, making the door a wreck.

Then there sounded down the corridor the cry of the Guards turning out—the clanging of steel, the ringing of spurs.

She turned. The King was lying back in a chair convulsed with laughter.

She flung away the sword, and then she too laughed.

Captain Churchill, with his sword drawn, had forced his way through the wreckage of the door, with a dozen of the Guards behind him. He saluted the King, and then looked round in readiness to attack an enemy. Nell smiled at him and nodded pleasantly.

“Why, what’s all this, Churchill?” cried the King, rising.

Churchill looked toward the wreck of the door.

“We heard the crash of wood, and fearing that your Majesty might be in danger——”

“Zounds, sir, may a gentleman not open his own door without getting a crowd about him?” asked the King.

“It may be that Captain Churchill heard some suspicious sounds,” suggested Nell.

“Sounds, madam—sounds—why we heard<——”

“Ah, I fancied so: that was the key grating in the lock. It needs badly to be oiled,” said Nell. “At anyrate, the door is now open, and so goodnight to your Majesty. Good-night, Captain Churchill. This is the second time that you have failed to take a prize.” After a low courtesy she turned to the door, and found herself face to face with Sedley and Buckingham. “Good-night, Sir Charles. Good-night, your Grace. Sir Charles is almost as adroit as your Grace in laying traps, but the bait is not worth the risk.” She went to the door, but, when there, looked over her shoulder with a peal of laughter. The next step she took brought her face to face with her mother. Killigrew was just behind the old woman. “Ah, mother, you have come for me at last,” she said. “You tarried long, good mother.”

“Oh, Nell, Nell, I’ve scurvy news—scurvy news this night,” said the old woman. Then she turned, crying, “Come hither,” and a stranger—a man in the dress of a sailor—entered and saluted.

Nell looked at him.

“Who is this?” she asked. “News—what mean you? What could be scurvy news unless—Dick— Dick Harraden—”

“This is an honest seafaring mariner who came to Lewknor Lane this night with bad news,” said Mrs. Gwyn.

“Tis about Dick—he is not dead,” cried Nell. “No, no, he is not dead. Why don't you speak, fellow, instead of standing there dumb?”

“Speak, sir, tell her your story,” said the mother.

“Tis soon told,” said the sailor. “I am the only one 'scaped from Ralph Harraden’s brig, the Good Adventure. We bore south for a cargo of negroes for the plantations, but the brig was boarded by a Barbary pirate and every soul was murdered save only myself, and now I wish that I had died with my mates.”

“Poor Dick Harraden in his last hour bade him search you out and tell you the news. Did he not, man?” said the mother.

“Ay, he made me swear to carry the news to you if I lived,” replied the man.

Nell stood silent for a long time.

“Dick—Dick Harraden dead!” she said in a voice choked with sobs. “Poor Dick! No one was ever kind to me except poor Dick, and now it seems that no kindness is left in all the world.”

She dropped into a chair and laid her face on her arm on the table.

The King bent over her.

“You shall never lack a friend while I live, Nell.” he said in a low voice.

“He guarded me and guided me, and now it seems that no guide is left for me in all the world,” she said, raising her head and looking vaguely round the apartment “Madam, my coach shall bear you to your home,” said the King.

“Home—home!” she cried. She leant back in her chair laughing hysterically. Suddenly she became grave. She shook the tears from her eyes. “Psha, what does it matter whither I go now?” she cried. “Life is short, let it be merry.” She started up. “God save the King! God save the Merry Monarch!”

She fell back into her chair and once more laid her head sobbing upon her arm on the table.

CHAPTER III.

THE COMEDY OF THE DUKE’S PLAYHOUSE.

“You are a brave fellow, Jack,” said the King, clapping young Churchill on his left epaulette. “Yes, i’ faith, you are a brave fellow: did not you refuse to lend my Lady Castlemaine—your Lady Castlemaine—a rouleau of fifty to allow her to carry on her game? Brave and prudent—that’s Jack Churchill! They say that you have e’en purchased an annuity, Jack.”

“Your Majesty is pleased to flatter,” said Churchill. “Where should I get money enough to purchase an annuity?”

“There are people about the Court who do not shrink from answering that question in detail before it is asked,” replied the King drily. He had long ago ceased to take such interest in the generosities of Lady Castlemaine as would cause him to be angry when he heard it suggested that her Ladyship had been kind enough to present Captain Churchill with five thousand guineas. It was quite well known that the prudent young gentleman, instead of handing back the gift to the giver—going through the form of sitting down to cards with her first—had invested it in an annuity, payable quarterly.

"I do not doubt that I have my detractors, sir,” said Churchill.

“Ay, sir, there are slanderers who carry their bitterness so far as to accuse a man of being thrifty,” said the King. “So far as I can gather, however, they have never been so hard on me,” he added.

“Your Majesty has loyal subjects,” said Churchill cautiously, as was his custom.

“Happy subjects, who can contrive to be loyal to the King and to the truth at the same instant,” said Charles.“I wonder if you were put to the test, Mr. Churchill, whether of the twain you would choose to stand by—the King or the truth?”

“Sir, I am one of your Majesty’s Guards—to a soldier his word is the truth,” cried the young man.

“Well spoken, sir,” said the King. “You are one of the King’s Guards—one of the guardians of the truth. By my faith, it hath been impressed upon me that the Sovereign whose soldiers are true to him is the true sovereign. But, Mr. Churchill, how comes it that we have drifted into a discourse on truth when we began by talking of just the opposite—a woman?”

“I ventured to speak of Mistress Sarah Jennings to your Majesty.”

In Captain Churchill’s tone there was more than a suspicion of severity. He meant the King to understand that he could not agree to his Majesty’s cynicism. He would merely have shrugged his shoulders if the King had excepted the beautiful Sarah Jennings from his cynical generalisation.

“To be sure,” laughed the King. “You began the conversation, not about womankind but just the opposite—about Mistress Jennings. You are in a parlous state, Jack, when a woman ceases to be a woman, and becomes the woman in your eyes. At the present moment it seems to me that the world is divided in your estimation into three parts—men, women, and yourself and Sarah Jennings. You come to me with the complaint that she will not love you because she has some foolish fancy——”

“I ask your pardon, sir, I said not——”

“You said not those very words, to be sure, but by the lud, Jack, you meant them. She hath a foolish fancy that in these dull days of street-lamps and the New Police, a fellow is on the same footing rs as one of the Knights of King Arthur’s Round Table—that he should win the love of his fair lady by strewing the tilt-yard with the bodies of other brave fellows.”

“Nay, sir; she said only that a man must win her by his bravery.”

“Ah, she hath before her eyes one of King Arthur’s knights, for all that—a fellow whose armour rattled every time he moved, so that housewives who had kettles to mend, hearing the clang, called to their children to stop the tinker’s cart that was coming down the road, all unaware that ’twas not a tinker’s cart but a stately knight ’Sdeath, sir, we live in a prosaic day, but the wenches know it not Did you tell her that you had refused to lend Lady Castlemaine a rouleau of guineas?”

“Mistress Jennings was present in the salon, sir.”

“Fore Gad, if she wants a stronger proof of your courage than that, she must be exacting. Courage —bravery—sure, sir, you do not expect me to declare war against the Tartars or the Moors or the Muscovites, in order to give you a chance of showing your bravery and so winning the white hand of Sarah Jennings,”

“Nay, sir, I would fain hope——”

“Try not to excuse yourself, Jack. I can read a face at times. Oh, lud, the arrogance of these lovers! This fellow would think nothing of butchering an army so that his lady smiled on him! What think you of that, Nelly?”

His Majesty had turned with a laugh to Madam Ellen, otherwise Nell Gwyn, who had entered the room where the King and Captain Churchill had been conferring.

“What do I think of it, doth your Majesty ask?” she said. “Faith, sir, if that be the thought which is in the heart—ah, better say, the mind— of Mr. Churchill, all I can say is that he hath more of my admiration to-day than he ever had before.”

“What’s this? Ha, I might have known that Nell would be on the side of the lovers,” said the King.

“What—are there two lovers, then?” cried Nell.

“Two? why, of course there are a pair of them. How could a man make a fool of himself unless by aid of a wench?” asked the King.

“Well, I allow that that is the easiest—and the wholesomest means that a man can resort to if he be bent on making a fool of himself,” said Nell. “But the resources of Mr. Churchill have always been so great I actually believe he could effect his purpose without such outside help.”

“You flatter me, madam,” said Captain Churchill while the King laughed boisterously, as he invariably did at the broad jests and sarcasms of Madam Ellen.

“Would I be demonstrating your faith if I were to hasten hence?”

“’Fore heaven that you would, Jack,” said the King. “You would be showing yourself to be a fool to run away from the blank cartridge fusillade of Nelly's quips, for by the Lord, if there’s anybody that can help you in your present evil state, ’tis she. Madam Ellen is chirurgeon-in-ordinary to the Court on all cases of love.”

“Ay, sir, and I swear that I have to my credit as fine a catalogue of graves as can be shown by any chirurgeon-in-ordinary to the King,” said Nell.

“Lud—lud!” said the King. “Is’t not a pitiful sight, Nell? Here is this brave fellow who would look for no better fare than to lead a troop of dragoons in a charge against a stubborn enemy outnumbering him and his friends by two to one— here he is, ready to weep bitter tears because a young woman pretends that she doth not love him”

“Pretends—ah, pretends—if it were only pretence!” murmured Churchill.

“Faugh!” said the King. “I dare not stay to witness any more of this comedy. For the Lord’s sake, Nell, bring him to his senses.”

“Your Majesty means not for me to bring him to his senses, but to our sense, and that is no easy task to accomplish,” laughed Nell.

The King with exaggerated mimicry of the doleful plight of his young officer, left the salon, and Madam Ellen, when she had risen from her courtesy, slapped the young officer just as his Majesty had done, between the shoulders.

“Be cheered, my commander,” she cried. “Do you fancy, sir, that you will make good progress with your suit by assuming a doleful countenance? Know you not that there is nothing a woman hates worse than a doleful face, especially when she knows that she is the cause of it? Think, sir, there’s as fine fish in the sea——”

“Oh, proverb me no proverbs, madam,” he cried. “Good lud! if proverbs could heal such wounds as are mine, Solomon would be accounted the sagest of chirurgeons. That proverb about the fine fish may comfort a fishmonger, but ’tis no use to me. I have tried it hourly for the past month. Solomon who writ it was a king, and we know that kings are accustomed to find consolation otherwhere than in proverbs.”

“Rush in with a laugh,” cried Nell, “among the lady’s suitors; open a way for yourself among them —don’t be too careful about treading upon their toes, and if any of them object, whip out your sword and slash them into little bits. Then put your arm round the lady and carry her off—ay, or bid her follow you, and take my word for it, she’ll follow you, except when she runs before you to haste to the church.”

“Would to heaven that Sarah Jennings could so be won,” said he. “’Fore Gad, I would give all I possess to have a chance of fighting for her. But now—you hear what she says, Nell: ‘Only one who hath proved himself a brave soldier shall wed me/ How the devil can I prove myself to be a brave soldier in these wretched times of peace? Why was I not born in time to show at Naseby the stuff that was in me.”

“If you had been old enough to take part in the fight at Naseby you would have been on the side of Cromwell,” said Nell.

“What? You mean—”

“I mean that the prudence of Mr. Churchill would have prevented him from being on any side except the winning one.”

“I tell you, madam, that you affront——”

“Not your intelligence, sir—you cannot say that I affront your intelligence, and unless your intelligence is touched, you care nought Look ye here, Captain Churchill; you have a cool head—ay, and a cool heart into the bargain, and this double endowment will one day make you the greatest commander in England—perhaps in the world, and it is because I like you so well, and because I like Sarah Jennings of her Royal Highness’s train so well, I mean to help you—yes, and her.”

Jack Churchill looked at her closely for one moment “That’s it—that’s it,” she cried. “That’s the true searching scrutiny of the eye of a great commander. But, indeed, you may trust to me, Captain. I am an ally, not a spy.”

“I trust you with all my——”

“Intelligence—that’s the word you were looking for—don’t say, with all your heart; it does not mean near so much. Well, Mr. Churchill, I will trust you with a secret that may be of use to you, for I dare swear that Sarah Jennings hath not conveyed it to you, fearing your prudence.”

“She hath conveyed no secret to me. If she cares aught for me she hath kept that a secret also.”

“It may be that that secret hath not yet been revealed to the young lady herself, but with good fortune it may be so shortly. Hark’e, Mr. Churchill, is’t a secret to you that Miss Jennings and her friend Miss Price have a mind to carry out a mad prank to-morrow?”

“A mad prank? I heard nothing of it The Duchess—”

“The Duchess is to be kept as much in the dark in regard to this matter as the Queen. The two young women have a mind to go masquerading to the playhouse.”

“The King’s House or the Duke’s?”

“The Duke’s. They hope to disguise themselves as orange-girls. Lud! What fools young women can be, to be sure, if they only give their attention to the business. Orange-girls! They hope that their freak will become the talk of the Court. I think it very likely, too, that it will have such a result. Tis quite another question if they will like it”

“They confided their intention to you?”

He was looking at Madam Ellen in his cold, searching, and suspicious way. She leant back and smiled—such a smile should, she thought, disarm every suspicion of man.

“That is the way you will look at prisoners who are brought before you when you become a great commander,” she said. “Yes, and they will fall on their knees before you and confess all their wickedness. But still, you see, I remain on my feet in spite of the soul-searching inquisition of those eyes. of yours. You think it unlikely that the two young women would give me their confidence?”

“I know nought about Miss Price,” said he.

“And very little about Miss Jennings,” said she. “But you are right, my captain. Neither of the pair would confide in me directly. But if one of the Duchess of York's maids comes to me secretly and begs me to instruct her in the music of the orange-girl's cry—if she tarry with me acquiring the rise and fall of our ‘Oranges—who’ll buy oranges?'—and then if another of the train of her Royal Highness comes to me asking for just the same instruction, I think I may be permitted to draw my own conclusions, without leaving the young ladies open to the charge of confiding in me.”

“Surely—surely,” said the young man; but still there was suspicion in his tone and something more than suspicion in his eyes.

Madam Ellen’s eyes gave a little flash of indignation, for she could scarcely avoid perceiving that Jack Churchill declined to believe in her. He could not conceal from her the fact that he was treating her precisely as she had said he would treat a prisoner who might be brought before him on a charge of being a spy.

“The two ladies came to you for instruction in the matter of selling oranges?” he said, when she hesitated in continuing her story.

“I said so just now,” she replied. “I will trust in your honour not to reveal to them anything of what I have told you; and now I am going forth to take the air."

She took some trouble to arrange at a small mirror the wires that kept the charming dancing curls of her hair away from her forehead.

“Great heavens, madam, you do not mean to leave me thus?” he cried in surprise.

She turned to him with one finger and thumb dealing drastically with a refractory curl. Her eyes were wide open with surprise—innocent surprise.

“Great heavens, sir, what more is there to tell?” she cried, mimicking his tone to perfection.

“You have either told me too much or too little,” he said, approaching her.

“Let it be the former,” she said. “Alas! I fear that I have done much to spoil the innocent prank of a pair of charming creatures. They are both innocent school romps still, though they have been about the Court for nigh upon a year. Yes, you would do well to forget what I have said, Mr. Churchill,—mischief only may come of it And so, sir—”

“Stay,” he cried, as she went to the door. “I wish to know why you tell me all that you have told me. I must know—”

“Nay, Mr. Churchill, I must remind you that though you have all the mien of an officer at a drum-head court-martial, I am not yet your prisoner,* said she with a laugh, and all the curls about her forehead danced like pretty little sprites as. she nodded quite pleasantly at him, and skipped out of the room. He took a step toward the door, intending to follow her, but when the door was opened he heard the laughter of the King, who was playing battledore and shuttlecock with the Duke of Monmouth, in the antechamber into which she had gone; and as he had no desire to have another interview with the King, Captain Churchill thought it better to make his exit by the opposite door, which led into the great corridor.

“Well,” said the King, “have you given him a lesson in wooing? You might e'en have spared your breath, Nell. There may be a school for saints—a college for husbands—”

“The two are never under the same roof,” said Nell.

“I’faith, madam, it must be allowed that the teachers for each are diverse, though the discipline is identical,” replied Charles. “Ay, but there's no short cut to wooing. You were too wise to offer advice to such as Jack Churchill, I'll warrant.”

“Advice? 'Tis to your Captain Churchill you should hasten should your Majesty ever need a counsellor,” said she.

*A wise counsellor is one who is wise enough to refrain from giving counsel,” said the King. “Methinks I shall go to battledore and shuttlecock when I need a Chamberlain and a Chancellor.”

"Which will be which?” asked Nell.

"Let’s see. The parchment of the battledore— eh, that’s for the Chancellor at anyrate.”

"And the cork is plainly for the Chamberlain— ay, for he should bottle up all that he hears with a well-fitting cork.”

"Ay, and Jack Churchill——”

"Psha! Jack Churchill is the sort of man who would lay out his first money on an annuity, which they say he hath done. He will never want for anything as long as he hath the quality of the shuttlecock.”

"Lud, Nell; Jack hath no quality of the volatile shuttlecock about him.”

"Oh, yes; if we live long enough we shall see him exhibit the best quality of the shuttlecock— the quality of changing sides rapidly without falling betwixt the two.”

"What, have you made him tired of Sarah Jennings? I could well believe that in your presence—”

"In my presence, sir, he was more like your Chancellor than your Chamberlain—ay, and more like Dr. Ken than either. He took to treating me as your Attorney-General would treat the leader of a Popish plot. I will be even with him, never fear.”

The King laughed.

“Oh, I have no fear that you will be even with him. What I fear is that you may be more than even with him. These prudent young men are such fools!”

“They are—they are. There is no fool like your wise young man. He never will be a wise young man—” She laid her hand on the head of the Duke of Monmouth, who was beginning to show signs of resenting the interruption to his game of battledore. “I am afraid that he will not live long enough to be a wise old one.”

She left the room and went to her own apartments in that great straggling courtyard of buildings of varying height and form, which went by the name of Whitehall.

“There is nothing makes me so choleric as the prudent young man!” she exclaimed as she threw herself down among the cushions of her settee. “Happily very few are allowed to live. Providence looks after the imprudent, but the prudent ones think they can manage for themselves. That’s how they mostly die young. Lud! the way my sage looked at me to try to discover if I were lying or not. I meant to do him a good turn; but now . . . would it be doing him a good turn to make a fool of him? Perhaps it would. But how—how? . . . What do I say? How? Good ludl is there any task so easy under Heaven as the fooling of a man? Why ’tis so simple that no thanks are due to the woman who accomplishes it . . . Let me see . . . ’twould be such a satisfaction after the wise way he looked at me ... he hoped to discover whether or not I was lying . . . lud! as if I could not lie on every point of the compass without his being the wiser!”

After awhile she closed her eyes; but assuredly she did not go asleep. In a few minutes she gave a loud laugh, sprang to her feet and clapped her hands artlessly as a child.

“By my faith I’ll do’t—I’ll do’t, if ’twere only to teach my young sage a lesson,” she cried.

She walked about the room laughing and whistling and chuckling, and then, seeing that the coach of her Royal Highness the Duchess of York was in the act of drawing up at one of the doors in the courtyard, she opened one of her windows and there rang out in musical accents the orange-girl’s cry—

“Oranges—who’ll buy my oranges?”

Mistress Sarah Jennings, maid of honour to her Royal Highness, had just descended from the coach. She gave a hasty glance up to the window, and then looked demurely down, as though she hoped no one would fancy she had heard that cry.

That night Captain Churchill was on duty in the great hall where a Saraband was being danced before supper. The Counteiss of Castlemaine was quarrelling with her partners over a game df spadille in one of the anterooms. When the dance was over and someone was thrumming on a guitar, accompanying the singing by Rochester of a song in French which ought never to have been sung in any language, Churchill approached the lovely Sarah Jennings.

“I would fain hope that you could present yourself at the Duke’s Playhouse to-morrow evening,” said he.

“Good heavens! why to-morrow evening?” she cried, and he perceived in an instant that she had been taken by surprise: she was quite flurried and her voice had faltered, as she questioned him. He knew that Nell Gwyn had confided to him what was the truth.

“Tis a play of Shakespere called ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that is to be put on, and Mr. Dryden speaks well of it,” said he.

“No, no; 'tis sure impossible for me to go,” said the girl. “I find Shakespere too coarse for us modems. Besides, her Royal Highness hath need of me to-morrow evening. I have promised to teach the Lady Anne the steps of a country-dance.”

“Ah, such duty is imperative, is’t not?” said he with a smile. “You could not possibly go to the playhouse even for an hour—while the orange-wenches are still crying their wares?”

She looked at him with an exquisitely puzzled expression upon her face—she was a far better actress than he gave her credit for being, he thought—and then she said—

“Prithee, explain yourself, sir. What i' the name of Heaven have I got to say to the orange-wenches?”

“Why, nothing, to be sure, if you do not go to the playhouse,” he said.

“But even if I were to go, do you fancy that I would buy their wares?” she cried.

“I cannot believe that Miss Jennings would either buy oranges or sell them in a playhouse,” he said, with a low bow and a smile which he meant to signify a great deal. He saw that there was a flush on her face when he had spoken—and smiled; his sense of prudence suggested to him the advisability of moving away at this moment, and he did move away with considerable adroitness.

When she was alone she stamped her foot upon the floor—an action not very frequent with her in her young days, though by no means uncommon when she had become Duchess of Marlborough.

Miss Price, another of the Duchess of York’s maids of honour, heard the tap of her heels on the floor and contrived to get beside her.

"What has happened?” she inquired in a whisper.

"What? Nothing, except that Jack Churchill knows everything there is to be known,” replied Sarah with flashing eyes.

Then Miss Price’s heels also rapped upon the floor.

“’Twould provoke a saint; but ’twill not spoil our sport,” she said, after a thoughtful pause.

"I fear that it will do so—how could we go? I vow that I should die of shame,” said Sarah.

"And I should die of chagrin were we forced to break our scheme, so I swear that we shall go at all hazards,” said Miss Price firmly.

But later in the evening the charming pair came upon Madam Ellen in the Gallery.

Madam Ellen put her forefinger on her lower lip and shook her head.

"The jade knows everything,” she whispered —"the jade” was Nell’s pet name for Lady Castlemaine.

“Impossible,” cried both the girls.

“Nay, ’tis certain,” said Nell. “And moreover she means to take measures to put you to shame. She has been longing for such a chance since it came to her ears that Jack Churchill hath been at your ladyship’s feet She doth not forget that he was once her lover.”

“Psha! What can she do, after all?” said Miss Price.

“Not much, but no devil could do more,” replied Nell with her accustomed simplicity of language.

And then the two maids of honour so far forgot themselves as to swear.

The next evening Captain Jack Churchill was early at the Duke’s Playhouse; not so early, however, as the Countess of Castlemaine, whom he saw half hidden by the curtains of the King’s box on the opposite side of the stage to where he sat. It was quite unlike her ladyship to be too soon for the performance even of a play of Mr. Congreve’s, which was much more to her taste that one of Shakespeare’s; and a knowledge of this fact caused Captain Churchill to wonder what element of interest the piece of the evening possessed in her eyes to cause her so to depart from her usual custom of entering the playhouse at the best moment to draw the attention of the audience away from the stage. It was also unlike her ladyship to remain for any moment in concealment; and thus he was led to marvel still more.

It was not long before he noticed that from her seat behind the box curtain, she was closely surveying the people in the pit—or was it possible that she was actually scrutinising the features of the orange-girls who were doing a brisk trade among the youths as they took their places on the wooden forms?

He kept well behind the curtains of his own box, and for some time he felt greatly relieved to find that among the orange-girls there was none who bore the smallest resemblance to his beloved Sarah. He came to the conclusion that, if Miss Jennings had ever intended to play the prank which, according to Madam Ellen, she meant to carry out, she had changed her mind after he had given her to understand that he knew of her plans.

But then he began to have a feeling of disappointment. He had, on his way to the playhouse, been conscious of a certain satisfaction at the possibility of his being called on to protect the girl to whom he was so ardently attached. He knew of the rude favours which were sometimes offered to the orange-girls in the pit and gallery of the two playhouses, and he could see his beloved stretching out her hands to him, when some rough fellow put his arms about her waist and tried to kiss her, and then— well, just as he was reflecting that he would have no opportunity of rescuing the girl and laying the rude fellow low in the dust, he was struck fair on the chest by an orange that seemed to come from the clouds, and he heard a loud laugh and a considerable commotion in the pit “Oranges—who’ll buy oranges?”

He started up, for the cry was an excellent imitation of Nell Gwyn’s, but it came from an orange-girl who was forcibly pushing her way to the front, exchanging quips with the rascals on the benches, slapping them on the shoulders, and knocking off a hat here and there. Never had there been seen or heard so saucy a baggage in the pit of either of the playhouses since Nell Gwyn had relinquished her basket And he knew her at once. Although she had disguised herself with considerable cleverness, adding carmine to her cheeks until her complexion was more brilliant even than Nell Gwyn’s—although her lovely hair which she always wore smooth, was disordered as he had never seen it, still it was her hair—he knew it at once—he knew her at once. If he was shocked to see Miss Jennings behaving in a free and easy way with the men who came round her, giving her ample chances of replying to their rude jests—chances of which she availed herself to the fullest extent—he could not but be lost in admiration of her sang-froid, of the cleverness with which she imitated the impudence of the saucy orange-girl. He felt that Nell Gwyn had been an admirable preceptress. She had taught Miss Jennings more than the rudiments of orange-vending, and Miss Jennings had proved herself so apt a pupil that she might have spent all her life with a basket in the pit of the theatre.

He ventured to glance across the stage to Lady Castlemaine’s box, and he saw that her ladyship was smiling in a very self-satisfied way. He also noticed that a man—quite a common man—entered her ladyship's box furtively, and conferred with her in the shelter of the curtain. While he was wondering what this meant, he saw an orange spin through the air and alight upon the left shoulder of her ladyship—it was an orange that was too soft for eating, but it made a merciful missile by reason of its softness.

Her ladyship sprang to her feet with one of the strongest oaths Jack Churchill had ever heard her utter. She rushed to the front of the box, gesticulating wildly to the orange-girl, but not a word that she uttered was audible, owing to the persistence of the laughter of the people in the pit and the strenuous tones of the orange-girl’s cry—

“Oranges—who’ll buy my oranges?”

“I know you, foul creature that you are!” shrieked the Countess with appropriate dramatic action.

The people roared—some of them hooted, for the Countess of Castlemaine was abhorred by the populace.

“Her Ladyship saith she knows you, girl,” cried a man.

“Not half so well as we all know her Ladyship,” cried the orange-girl.

There came a splendid voice of assent from all parts of the playhouse. The Countess looked with scorn to right and left, then she gesticulated once more in the direction of the orange-girl.

“She saith that it was you who sent the orange at her,” cried an interpreter who sat nearest to the box.

“Then ask her if she doth not think shame to take a poor girl’s oranges without offering to pay for them,” cried the girl, and there was another shout of laughter, in the midst of which the Chorus came before the curtain to speak the prologue. Not a word was audible. Everyone in the playhouse seemed to be shouting in rage at Lady Castlemaine, bidding her sit down and no longer interrupt the performance of the play. They also put some inquiries to her ladyship respecting the details of her private life, and were even cruel enough to ask where her husband was, assuming that she should be held responsible for her husband’s absence.

“For the Lord’s sake, don’t bid her go back to her husband,’’ cried the orange-girl. “What has the poor man done to deserve such a fate?”

While the people yelled, the Countess gesticulated dumbly, and so did the unfortunate actor who was trying to speak the prologue.

In the midst of the tumult, Captain Churchill saw the orange-girl whispering in the ear of a stalwart fellow who stood beside her. A moment later she was going through the pantomime of endeavouring to retain her basket against the combined force of the man and two of his companions. Churchill saw that she was acting the part to perfection, and he was amazed, for his beloved Sarah had never before given evidence of her ability to assume such a part, to say nothing of carrying it out with such abandon. It seemed that the basket was taken from her only with the greatest difficulty and after a sharp struggle, in the course of which she found it necessary to deal the man several stinging blows on the head. The moment the man had taken the basket, all the men on the bench where he sat, picked out oranges and began flinging them, with various degrees of accuracy, at the curtain which now sheltered the figure of Lady Castlemaine.

In a few minutes there was a huge uproar in the playhouse, and Churchill saw the girl making swiftly for the place of exit from the pit, and he noticed that at the same moment a group of half-a-dozen men—one of them was the fellow who had been conferring with Lady Castlemaine in her box —made a rush for the same door. He saw that the girl was the first to reach it; but he did not wait to see anything more; he ran down the steps of his box and hurried out by the way of exit from the boxes, and made with all speed for the pit door.

Before he had got round the comer he heard a woman’s cry of alarm, then a shriek, followed by hoarser shouts. He drew his sword and in another second he was in the midst of a mêlée. One man who barred his way to where the orange-girl was struggling in the grasp of three swarthy ruffians, he ran through the body; the next instant he sent the steel hilt of his sword into the face of a second man who had aimed a blow at him with a sailor’s hanger. Then he rushed with shortened weapon upon the fellows in whose grasp the girl was struggling, and by the sheer impetuosity of his assault, swept one of them off his feet and hurled him in a heap to the bottom of the steps.

He turned like a lion upon the others, and for a second he paused undecided which of them to attack first. The decision was not left to him. They almost flung the girl upon him, and fled to right and left In another moment he had his arm about her, and had borne her to where his coach was waiting, in one of the side-streets. (He had taken the precaution to go to the playhouse in a coach.)

She had not fainted, in spite of the treatment which she had received. She was not even breathless. She was self-possessed enough to swear roundly and soundly against the ruffians who had, she declared, attacked her by order of Lady Castlemaine. She spent all her breath in vituperation of her ladyship and her band of bullies; and it was not until the coach was half way to Whitehall that she found words to thank her deliverer.

“’Twas a mad freak, truly,” she said in a low voice, the voice of the Sarah Jennings which was as music to his ear. Up to that moment her tones had been strident, and in no way resembling the soft notes of his beloved. “Ah, yes, a mad freak! But I do not regret it; nay, nay, for I now know that you are the bravest man that lives, Jack.”

He caught her hand and covered it with kisses.

“Sweet one,” he said, “I do not need any word of thanks—any word of commendation. No show of bravery was needed to deal with those rascals. You know, my dear child, that I have loved you from the first hour we met. If a hair of your head had been injured not one of those miscreants would have escaped.”

“I knew when I saw you in the box that I was safe, whatever might happen,” said she.

He put his arm about her and she laid her head on his shoulder with a sigh of content “I am yours,” she said weakly. “I was foolish to pretend that you had not captivated my poor heart long ago.”

“Dear love,” he whispered, “’twas an inspiration that sent me to the playhouse this evening. I have won the sole girl whom I would make my wife.”

He pressed her close to him as the coach lumbered along between the flaring links of the runners.

She begged of him to set her down at Nell Gwyn’s house, at the corner of St James’s Square. It was Madam Ellen who had dressed her as an orange-girl, she said, and she meant to return in her own garments to Whitehall.

He gave the coachman his instructions, and when they were about to separate he whispered—

“Dear love, let us exchange remembrances of this joyous hour. I have no gift worthy of your acceptance, but the smallest token that comes from you will be precious to me—a glove—a piece of riband.”

“Ah, sir,” said she,” “orange-wenches do not wear gloves, and as for ribands——” she bent her head for a moment and then pressed a piece of riband into his hand. “’Tis all I have,” she said. “And now you must give me in exchange your sword knot.”

“So poor a gift! so paltry a gift!” he cried, unfastening the sword knot and handing it to her.

“I shall prize it for ever,” she said.

Thus they parted. She hastened into Nell Gwyn’s house, and he drove off with exultant heart to his apartment at Whitehall.

When about half an hour had passed, he was summoned by one of the Duchess of York’s pages into the presence of her Royal Highness. He bowed low to her on entering, and then became aware of the fact that at one side of the room Lady Castlemaine was standing with a flushed face, while at the other side was Sarah Jennings, looking calm and pale, but undeniably angry.

“Mr. Churchill,” said the Duchess, "I have troubled you by no will of my own, but at the imperative desire of my Lady Castlemaine.”

“I saw you in the playhouse, and you saw her; deny it if you can,” cried the Countess.

He glanced at Sarah. She made no appeal to him. No expression of earnest entreaty was on her face.

He was silent.

“Lady Castlemaine hath made a remarkable charge against Mistress Sarah Jennings,” said her Royal Highness.

“Lady Castlemaine hath lost her senses,” said Mistress Sarah Jennings.

“She charges Mistress Jennings with masquerading as an orange-girl in the pit of the Duke’s Playhouse,” continued the Royal Duchess.

“And I affirm that Captain Churchill was a witness of the same disgrace,” cried the Countess.

“He could not be a witness of what did not happen,” said the Duchess. “I affirm that for the past two hours Mistress Jennings hath not been out of my sight for more than a quarter of an hour.”

“Do you think that I am a fool, madam?” shouted the Countess.

“I think that perhaps Captain Churchill may be able to dispel this mystery—that is why I have sent for him,” said the Duchess of York. “Mr. Churchill, did you see Mistress Jennings at the playhouse?”

“No, madam, I did not see her at the playhouse,” replied Jack Churchill boldly.

“What! you have the effrontery to tell me that you was unaware of the plot—of this masquerading disgrace—of the outrage——”

Lady Castlemaine took a couple of furious steps toward the young man, but the Duchess interposed.

“I cannot allow any further questions to be put to Mr. Churchill, madam,” she said. “Your Ladyship hath sure taken leave of your senses.”

“Tis a plot, a foul plot, and you, Anne Hyde, are at the bottom of it; and that liar——”

The Duchess gave the infuriated woman a glance of scorn and left the room.

Sarah Jennings laughed a moment later.

With a torrent of vituperation flowing from her quivering lips, Lady Castlemaine flung herself through the opposite door.

He ran across the room to his beloved.

“My dearest, I was brave enough to lie for your sake,” he whispered.

“What i’ the name of all the saints do you mean, Mr. Churchill?” she said, raising her hand to keep him at a distance.

“Ah, dear one, there is no need for dissimulation at this time,” he cried. “Let me steal but one more kiss to keep company with those you so willingly gave me in the coach.”

“Good lud! Hath the man gone mad? Hath everyone gone mad?” said the girl.

“Nay, unless it be madness to love you, my Sarah. But remember your confession.”

“My confession, sir? Oh, the man is mad!”

“Nay, sweet one, did not you affirm between your kisses that——”

“Wretch, you come red-handed from taking some woman’s kisses to talk to me of love. Get you hence, sirrah, and let me not see your face again.”

He staggered back. “Good heavens!” he cried. “Can it be possible that—that——”

Mechanically he took from his pocket the riband that he had received in the coach.

She made a few hasty steps to him and snatched it out of his hand and examined it “You wretch!” she cried, “take yourself out of my presence”—she pointed theatrically to the door —“and take with you,” she added, “take with you, Nell Gwyn’s garter.”

The piece of riband fluttered through the air.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COMEDY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY.

I

“I Marvel much," said Miss Jennings, “first, why his Majesty should choose to send to Richmond Park by road, instead of by water; secondly, why he should choose me to convey his message to my Lady Castlemaine; and, thirdly, why he should choose you to be my companion.”

“I can only account for one of these marvels; it is the last named by you, but perhaps 'tis the most marvellous,” said Captain Churchill.

“Tis certain the most marvellous,” sneered the beautiful lady—she ceased to be beautiful only when she sneered; but she did not seem to be aware of this fact, for while in her secret heart there was no one in whose eyes she wished 'to appear to greater advantage than she did in Mr. Churchill's, yet from the moment he had acknowledged the salute of the sentries as the coach rattled out of Whitehall, she had never ceased to sneer at her companion. “Ay, sir, I swear that you are right in this matter though wrong in most others,” she continued; “for ’tis marvellous that the King should think of no more acceptable travelling companion for me than Mr. Churchill.”

“His Majesty is assured that I would defend Mistress Sarah Jennings with my life,” said Mr. Churchill.

“Ay, sir, his Majesty is so assured, because he hath heard with what valiancy Mr. Churchill defended Madam Eleanor Gwyn from the fellows that attacked her when she went back to her old trade of selling oranges in the pit of Drury Lane for one night only,” said Sarah Jennings with a laugh that had more of harshness than of merriment in its tone.

Mr. Churchill bit his lip with vexation. He could not pretend not to understand what it was she alluded to. Only the previous week Nell Gwyn, out of pique for his suspecting her good will toward himself and Sarah Jennings, had played a prank upon him by going to the Theatre disguised (in a measure) as Mistress Jennings, and, driving back with him to Whitehall in his coach, had, in the character of Sarah, promised to marry him. Ever since it had come to her knowledge that Captain Churchill had driven in his coach with his arm about Nell Gwyn’s waist, Miss Jennings had treated him with contumely.

She had a suspicion, when, on this morning, her mistress, the Duchess of York, told her that it was the King’s pleasure to send her on a special mission to Lady Castlemaine at Sir Daniel Harvey’s house in Richmond Park, and that Mr. Churchill had been instructed to hold himself in readiness to act as her guard, that his Majesty’s aim was to bring about a reconciliation between her and the young officer.

Having this suspicion, she was the more determined not to become reconciled to him. She had allowed him to help her into the coach, having previously made a frigid courtesy in response to his profound bow, but she did not condescend to open her lips to him or even to look at him for a considerable time. The coach, with its six horses, was just entering the beautiful bosky drive abreast of the Pinery—neither of the occupants of that carriage could foresee that one day they should build for themselves a stately house on this spot— when Jack Churchill ventured to ask if his companion meant to make the drive to Richmond in silence. Then it was that she acquainted him with the three marvels which she said engrossed her thoughts.

He felt that he should not pay any attention to her sneers, but her allusion to the way he had been fooled by Nell Gwyn the previous week was more than he could bear.

"Cruel—cruel Sarah!” he said reproachfully— almost pathetically. "Why will you still refuse to believe my protestations? Have I not given you my assurance that when I fought the knaves who were molesting her—when I put her into my coach —I believed that it was you whom I was serving?”

"That’s the worst of it,” she cried, her eyes blazing. "You took that creature for me. Heaven above us, sir, do you think that such a woman as I could ever forgive so gross an affront? I could forgive you for fighting a rogue or two on behalf of a woman—I could forgive you for driving from the playhouse to Whitehall with a woman’s head resting on your shoulder—I don’t doubt that you are a man like the rest of the men—but that you should take Nell Gwyn for me—oh, sir, that were past the endurance of even so meek a woman as myself.”

"I allow that you are in the right,” said Churchill. "No one with eyes to see should ever make such a mistake.”

“But you had eyes to see.”

"Nay, madam, they were so blinded by my devotion for the fairest face of woman——”

"Ay, ’tis Nell Gwyn’s face that is so described by the courtiers of Whitehall, and a courtier, as everyone knoweth, can only speak the truth. Well, sir, touching your devotion to this face—your blind devotion--”

“You know that you do me an injustice, Sarah,” said he gravely. “You know that there is but one face that I see before me by day and by night.”

“What, is your case so desperate as that?” she cried. “Doth the incident of that brazen creature’s face having lain on your shoulder cause you to have it ever before you? In good faith, Captain Churchill, it would have been wiser on your part if you kept her face before you rather than on your shoulder when she was with you in the coach.”

“Cruel one! you know that I went to the playhouse expecting to see you there in the character Madam Ellen assumed.”

“Yea, selling oranges in the pit; that was what you expected to find me doing. Grant me patience, Heaven!”

Her prayer was a timely one. She had certainly the greatest need for that special virtue at that special moment But it did not seem as if Heaven had vouchsafed to grant her petition, for her impatience was never more clearly manifested than in the tone of her voice and in the intertwining of her fingers as she continued, “Selling oranges in the pit of the playhouse—that was how you looked for me to appear. That would sure have been a new part for me, but certainly not for Nell Gwyn— —’tis the part of a lady that is the artificial one for her. Ay, and you fought for her. I hear that you performed prodigies of valour on her behalf. I dare not flatter myself that you would ever have done so much for me.”

Jack Churchill seemed to have been carried away by her continuous railing, but when she made her last stab he appeared to recover himself. He gave a little start, and then glanced quickly first out of the window to the right and then out of that to the left. On each side of the coach there were leathern holsters containing horse-pistols. He was in full uniform of an officer of the Guards, and he had not unbuckled his sword on entering the vehicle. When Miss Jennings had spoken her bitter words, he shifted the weapon so as to bring the hilt into prominence. He half drew the sword as if to assure himself that it had not jammed in the scabbard.

She laughed contemptuously,

“You mean to suggest that if the opportunity came you would not be slow to avail yourself of it?” she said.

“That is just what I mean,” he replied.

“Oh, sir, if I was otherwhere than in this coach I would sink into the ground overwhelmed by your compliment,” she cried. “What, you would actually do for Sarah Jennings what you did for Nell Gwyn? Oh, Captain Churchill, I am fairly overwhelmed! Luckily, however, there is no chance of your protestations of valour being put to the test”

He looked at her for some time curiously—inquiringly.

“Alas, no; ’tis unlikely that any Popish plot is afoot for the abduction of the maids of honour of the Duchess of York,” said he. “Still, I have heard of highwaymen on the road to Kensington.”

“Psha! highwaymen! Many of these knights of the road, as they call themselves, have recently been seen among the green lanes between Nottingham House and Brompton; but whom were they seen by, pray tell me, good sir? Sir Charles Sedley and his ' friend Lord Buckhurst posting from his lordship’s house at Epsom.”

“Even though Lord Buckhurst said he saw them, there may still be a highwayman or two left,” said Churchill.

“For my sake—and for yours, sir, I will hope for the best,” said she. “’Twould be a humilia tion indeed for me to arrive at the Ranger’s Lodge alone.”

“That might well happen, Sarah,” said he. “I feel that it is gracious of you to suggest so prettily that I would die saving you.”

“Ay, you might die of a sudden palsy of the heart brought on by running too fast to save the one who is dearest to you.”

“The one who is dearest to me? Ah, who is dearer to me than——”

“Yourself? No one, I dare swear. You would die running away to save your own skin whole.”

Jack Churchill, who was constitutionally incapable of knowing what fear was, looked at the beautiful termagant for a few moments, and then leant back on the cushions and laughed. The next instant there came the sound of a pistol-shot—a second—a third—followed by a shout from the postillions and a jerk forward of the coach as the horses started into a wild gallop. Before they had gone a hundred yards, however, a pistol-shot sounded on the road in front of the coach and Sarah Jennings was flung right into Jack Churchill’s arms by the sudden swerving and stoppage of the vehicle.

He had time to give her a kiss, and to feel that she returned it—that was what amazed him—before he pushed her into a corner of the coach and pulled a pistol out of each holster. Then she saw him lean out of one of the windows, taking a steady aim in front of the coach. She heard him say, “Ha, he’s done for!” before the smoke of his fire had cleared away. Then she shrieked out, for a masked horseman had bent down to the opposite window with a long pistol in his grasp. She saw Jack strike up the barrel and the carriage became filled with the smoke of gunpowder as the weapon exploded against the roof.

The pungent smell sent her into a fit of coughing. She could neither see nor hear anything for some time. Then she became aware of the fact that the door of the coach was swinging wide open and that Jack Churchill was standing outside reloading his pistols.

She sprang to the door and thence to his side without using the steps for her descent She grasped him by the arm.

“Have you killed them all or have they all fled?” she cried.

“For Heaven’s sake get back to the coach! you are mad to leave it” he said with manifest consternation. “Back, for Heaven’s sake!”

“I am safe by your side,” she said. “I will stand by you, whatever may happen.”

He pointed to the wooded high ground east ot the gardens of Nottingham House. She saw there three horsemen all wearing masks. As he directed her eyes by his pistol-hand, the highwaymen raised their hats, bowing to their cruppers. Then they fired off their pistols into the air, clearly as a sign of good faith; afterwards they waved their hats, cheering.

She stood with both her hands clasped upon his left arm, and a puzzled expression was on her face.

“Return to the coach, for Heaven’s sake! Those rascals may mean to attack us again,” cried Jack Churchill, and he actually forced her to the door. She still kept looking over his shoulder at the highwaymen, until she heard a guffaw from one of the postillions. She glanced in the direction of the fellow and saw that his face was wrinkled in a smile —the broad smile of a postillion. She glanced at a second man. Nothing was visible of his face but his mouth. That enormous mouth of his had swallowed up all his other features.

“Into the coach!” cried Churchill peremptorily, half lifting her up the steps.

When she was in the act of seating herself, she saw him glaring at the postillions. She felt that it was undoubtedly a great breach of discipline—it was in fact a great piece of impudence for them to treat with smiles and guffaws so grave an incident as an attack of highwaymen. But then she reflected that the spectacle of the three masked horsemen on the hill taking off their hats and firing their pistols in the air, may have borne a comical aspect in the estimation of the postillions.

There were, she knew, people who thought the spectacle of a highwayman, after robbing a coach and frightening poor women and old men out of their lives, insisting on dancing a pavone with each of the ladies in turn, vastly amusing; so she was ready to make every allowance for the bucolic mirth of the outriders, and actually felt that Captain Churchill, in rating them soundly as he was doing outside, was taking too narrow-minded a view of their offence.

At anyrate he managed to alter the complexion of their smiles before he returned to her side in the coach and gave the signal for them to whip up their horses—a signal which they obeyed with alacrity.

He returned the pistols to their holsters.

“You do not fear that they will follow us?” she said, when he had settled himself back in his place.

“No, they will not follow us,” he replied in a low voice. (It was perfectly clear to her that he was not likely to become exultant upon his victory over the three highwaymen who had attacked the coach.)

"What, is there a sort of honour among these thieves? Do they really mean, when they discharge their pistols in the air, to affirm their intention of refraining from a further attack?”

"I know nothing of thieves’ sense of honour,” said he; “but I know that you need fear nothing further from these special rascals.”

Then he turned away his head and gazed out of the window beside him.

"I fear nothing further while—while—you are with me,” she said in a very low tone, glancing at the same instant toward him and throwing back her hood somewhat, so that the little gold curls of her hair squeezed themselves between the pale pink of the quilted lining and the still more delicate carmine of her cheeks. She had good reason to believe that at such moments of dishevelment she was irresistible even to men who had not previously expressed admiration for her. She was thus all the more surprised to find that this recently ardent lover of hers remained unmoved—nay, almost moody, in spite of the tenderness of the words she had spoken. She had actually prepared herself to withstand—up to a certain point—his warm response to her maidenly advance.

She was surprised. Was it possible, she asked herself, that she had spoken in a tone too low for him to hear her words?

She moved closer to him, and her eyes became wistful as she said again—

“I do not feel afraid. How could I feel afraid when I am with you? I know now that you are the bravest man that lives.”

Still he kept his arms folded. The rose-light that had come to her face when she was speaking, faded away. She stared at him, but he remained unmoved. It seemed as if he had received a hurt that had altogether changed his nature—she had heard of such things happening; the brain of a man was a curious organism.

She went still closer to him. She laid a hand upon his arm with a tender and womanly grace, as she looked earnestly into his eyes.

“Are you in pain?” she asked. “Did a bullet touch you?”

“No, I escaped without scathe,” he replied.

“Thank God for that—thank—kiss me, Jack!” cried the haughty Mistress Jennings.

His arms were round her in a moment, and then —then he allowed her to slip from him before his lips had touched her face.

Once again she was amazed—ashamed.The consciousness that her beauty had ceased to enchain him overwhelmed her. She burst into tears of vexation and bitterness and anger. When, at the sight of her tears, he sprang from his place and knelt at her feet—somewhat uneasily, for the coach was swaying upon the uneven road made through the meadows of the village of Hammersmith—she refused to allow him to take her hands, and when he put his arm about her she actually struck him on the breast.

“Coward!—you are a coward to take advantage of the chance offered to you by the King’s folly in thrusting this errand on me,” she cried with quivering lips. “Ah, but the King did not know that you were coward enough for this. Heavens above us! why did I trust myself with such a man? Release me, sir, or I shall shriek so that the fellows shall hear me and stop the coach.”

She had no difficulty in throwing off his hands; they were not, after the first moment, holding her so rigidly as to need any particular exertion on her part to get rid of them. He released her, and, with something of shame on his face, seated himself once again.

“I ask your pardon, madam,” he said; “but I thought—yes, I swear that I felt assured, after the way you spoke—yes, and your tears—that—by the lud! I know nought of women; and, madam, you spoke the truth when you called me coward; I acknowledge the truth—the bitter truth—I am a coward.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, but with no extraordinary measure of earnestness. She turned her head away from him and allowed her eyes to stray among the pastures of the Hammersmith farms— and there was the green with a boy in a smock driving a flock of geese up from the pond. The spire of Chiswick Church appeared in the far distance.

It was a pleasing pastoral scene, but Miss Jennings, though looking at it, saw none of its incidents. There was a long silence before she said—

“Yes, you are a great coward—to be afraid of a simple girl like me; you are, in addition, a big fool not to know that there are occasions when a girl may say what she does not mean in the least.”

“I know that is so. Did not you bid me——”

“I thought not of that. No; ’twas when I called you a coward just now and bade you release me. I know that you are no coward, and—well, I did not think that you would have the heart to release me so suddenly. There’s a gradation in all things, but you—oh, have I become ugly all in a moment that you had the heart to let me slip from your arms as though I were no more than a block of ice that chills one who holds it? Tell me truly, am I so repulsive to you now?”

“You were never lovelier in my eyes, only——”

“Only? Only what? Grant me patience, Heaven! what is in the man's mind? Is't possible that you still have an affection for Nell Gwyn?—answer me quickly and truly, mind you—truly; I am not a girl to be put off with prevarication.”

She had started to her feet, and was looking down with flashing eyes upon his face. She had a hand on each of his shoulders, and their grasp was so earnest that the swaying of the coach made no impression upon her. She was as firm as a rock.

“That woman whom you name has never been aught to me save an enemy,” said he. “The first prank she played upon me held me up to the ridicule of my regiment, but it was not so cruel as the last of a week's standing, since it. forced me to—”

“Forced you to—to what?” she cried when he paused.

“To come with you on this errand.”

“What, you think of her with bitterness on that account? Then stop the postillions and descend. My company is not forced upon you by my own consent, I promise you. Leave the coach, sir. If you have any shred of manly feeling remaining, you will leave the coach. Oh, Jack, I never was so treated before by any man—never—never.

Once again she was sitting in a corner of the coach weeping bitterly.

If he had known more about women than he did, he would have perceived that the right way to treat this girl, who had something of a Fury about her, was to allow her to weep until she had tired of weeping, and to treat her tears with indifference; but he had no skill in such warfare. He felt himself outmanoeuvred the moment a woman shed tears in his presence, and sought to capitulate on any terms.

That was why he knelt again at the pretty feet of his beautiful Fury and swore that he would never give her another moment of pain. What a wretch was he that he should cause the lustre of her eyes to be dimmed even for an instant, he implored her to tell him.

Of course she only wept the more bitterly, and all the time that her tears were flowing softly her heart was hardening against him. It was only when it occurred to him that he might make use of an endearing action as well as endearing words, and he ventured to kiss the wrist of one of her hands, that her tears were stopped. She took her hands from her face with a quick motion, and held her head back, thereby showing an expression of coldness not unmixed with scorn upon her pallid features.

“That will do, sir,” she said in chilling tones. “I must beg of you to recollect that I am engaged on a confidential mission for his Majesty, and that your office is merely that of a guard. I should fail in my duty if I were to allow any personal consideration to absorb a single thought of mine.”

“Nay, I ask but one word, my Sarah—one word of love,” he cried.

She wondered if he were really dense enough to overlook all the words of love which she lavished on him from the moment the orchards of Kensington were passed, but she still held back her head with that look of cold duty turning her features into marble.

“I am the King’s emissary,” she said, and at her words an expression of the greatest disloyalty came from his lips. She looked inexpressibly shocked, and he threw himself moodily back on the cushions on his side of the coach.

Whatever his reflections may have been—whether he was giving all his consideration to the question as to the advisability of carrying on the King’s business with the precision of a machine, or thinking if it might be that a certain personal element could be mixed up with it without detriment to one of his Majesty’s officers—the coach swept down the Sheen Road; and just as the entrance to Richmond Park was reached, Jack Churchill suddenly flung his arms about the girl sitting beside him and, in spite of her struggles, kissed her half-a-dozen times all over the face.

“Why did you do that?” she cried.

“I did it because you invited me to do it some time ago,” he replied. “I did it because I love you, my dear, and because I know that you love me and that you have always loved me, my Sarah.” She stared at him, and he saw that her eyes had lost nothing of their brilliancy. Then she threw her shapely head back and laughed with all the joyous abandon of a schoolgirl. Then she turned her sparkling eyes upon him as she cried—

“There is sure something of the fool about you, Jack. For why do you kiss me now though you refused me a quarter of an hour ago?”

He hung his head for a moment, but then he raised it with a reckless air.

“I was a fool, Sarah,” he cried. “I had scruples —one scruple, and, by the lud, I feel it returning to me now.”

“No, no,” she said with trepidation in every tone. “If it returns to you I vow that I shall hate you. Scruples—oh, all's fair in love and war.”

“You have said it—you have said it; you have put that devil’s argument in my mouth—remember that,” he cried. “Yes, alls fair in love and war.” “And when the two are in combination, as they have been with you and me for the past month or two, the proverb is doubly strengthened,” she said. Then she caught one of his hands with an eagerness that almost amounted to fierceness as she whispered the command with her face close to his, “Swear to me that you detest Nell Gwyn.”

“Psha!” he said, “I never liked her sufficiently well to detest her. A thought of her never comes into my mind.”

“Keep that way,” she said. “There, you may kiss my hand. We are at the Ranger’s Lodge.”

II.

“You are a very fortunate young gentleman, Mr. Churchill, even though you have had your journey for nothing,” said Sir Daniel Harvey to his guest as they sat together in the dining-hall of the Ranger’s Lodge.

“Have I had it to no purpose?” said Jack.

“Well, did not Mistress Jennings come hither to talk some important business with my Lady Castlemaine, who has been gone these three days to her house at Windsor?” said the Ranger.

“Psha, sir! the King knew well enough she was gone,” replied Jack.

“Then, i’ the name of Heaven, what meaneth his Majesty by sending Mistress Jennings——”

“’Twas but an excuse for—for showing his goodwill for me and Mistress Jennings,” said Jack.

Sir Daniel looked at him thoughtfully for a few moments, and then laughed heartily.

“Oh, lud!” he cried. “But the lady—I’ll swear that she knew nothing of this plot. And you were nigh killed by highwaymen? Well, i’ faith, say I, it serves you right”

“Sir Daniel,” said Jack in a whisper, “the highwaymen were part of the plot too.”

The old Ranger banged the table with his fist and swore that his Majesty was a merry king.

“Merry—his Majesty’s merriment hath humiliated me,” said Jack.

“Humiliated you! By the lud, sir, ’tis a humiliation that most men would submit to with a good grace. A lovely drive with a beautiful creature——”

“That’s my humiliation. I’ll tell you all the plot, Ranger, and accept your counsel. Since Madam Ellen played a prank on me Mistress Jennings hath shunned me. And the good-natured King, in order to bring us together, devised this* business to my Lady Castlemaine. But as Mistress Jennings hath been frequently heard to say that only the bravest man could win her, the King, Buckingham, and Sedley, and—I have a suspicion— Madam Ellen too, devised this attack upon the coach by highwaymen. They were to masquerade as such, and I was to beat them off, and so impress the lady that she would accept my suit”

“Good lud! and so it turned out? Well, well!” The Ranger was convulsed.

“Ay, that’s the worst of it, sir,” said Jack. “The plot succeeded but too well. I beat off the mock highwaymen, and I have driven through your park with the lady’s hand in mine.”

“By the Lord Harry, you are a lucky young gallant!”

“Lucky! by Heaven, sir, when I found that I had won the lady by false pretences, I was ready to put a bullet through my head. What am I to do, Sir Daniel? How can I marry the lady while I retain the consciousness of having won her by a trick?”

“Ay, sir; that is a nice question. I should not like to be concerned in answering it for myself.”

“Of course there are men who would be found ready to swear that in love and war—ah, the poor young lady said so with her own lips: ’twas a kind of consolation to me for a quarter of an hour, but then—ah, sir, how am I to face her in the future.”

“You have more scruples than most gallants who have received their early training in a Court, Mr. Churchill. And yet—well, they have tales about your pagehood, Jack Churchill, that——”

“But I have outgrown my pagehood now, Sir Daniel; so tell me quick what I am to do to purge myself of my connivance at this scurvy trick played upon an innocent girl.”

“Confess yourself to her, and by the lud, that will give her assurance that you are the bravest man living.”

“A Daniel come to judgment! You have shown me the only way out of my troubles, Sir Daniel. But there are degrees of bravery—I fear me that this would put courage to too severe a test.”

“’Sblood, sir, if you will enjoy the unusual luxury of scruples, you will e’en have to pay for them,” cried the Ranger, and at that moment the message was brought to the hall that the coach was awaiting Captain Churchill, and Captain Churchill, with a big sigh, rose, offering his hand to his host In a few minutes the coach was rumbling down the avenue on its way back to London.

Miss Jennings found that her lover had once again enwrapped himself in that garment of moroseness which he had worn in the earlier part of the day—immediately after he had sent the highwaymen flying. He sat in the comer of the coach furthest remote from her, and she heard him heave a sigh— not the sigh of the ardent lover, but the other sort— Miss Jennings was well acquainted with all the varieties of suspiration: she had for some time been a maid of honour.

She could not understand how it was that her lover had lapsed once again into that strange mood of his. She had expected him to take up the thread of his love-making where he had, so to speak, dropped it But it seemed that he had forgotten all about that violent kiss which—after some minutes of reflection—he had given her. She wondered if his memory in such incidents was short —if he looked for her to give him the cue of the last chapter, so that he might know exactly where he had left off in the story.

There was a good deal of scorn in her eyes as she turned her head and looked at him sitting moody, silent, and apart from her. He saw the expression on her face and hung his head. He knew that, however great was her scorn for him, it was not equal to the scorn he had for himself.

Then she began to talk bitterly of the fool’s errand upon which she had been sent The King had made a fool of her, she declared, for he could not but have known that Lady Castlemaine had left the Ranger’s Lodge. She continued in this strain until the coach was on the border of Tumham Green, and he listened to her without a word. He was too much engrossed with his own thoughts. He was reflecting that if she could talk in such a fashion upon the King’s making a fool of her, what would be her language when she learned from his confession how she had really been fooled?

She could stand his silence no longer.

“How can you sit there like a dolt?” she cried. “Have you no words to say whether you are glad or grieved at being with me on the journey? Have you as well as the King been fooling me, sir?”

She had turned to him with flashing eyes.

He hung his head, saying—

“Alas! alas! if I only had the courage to tell you all.”

“All—what is all?” she said in a wlusper—a dreadful whisper.

“I will be a man—I will confess,” he cried; but before he had quite spoken his last word he resolved to postpone his confession, for a shout came from one of the postillions, then a shot struck the panel of the coach, sending its splinters flying, and a flattened bullet fell on his hand.

“Curse them!” he shouted. “They do not know when a game’s played out! A bullet! By the Lord, Pll give them a bullet in exchange!”

He made a snatch for his pistol, but the instant he had grasped it, another shot rang through the air—a yell from a postillion. The coach swerved until it crashed sideways upon a high bank, flinging him and his companion violently against the opposite panel. He had scarcely recovered himself when a masked face appeared at the window and a coarse voice roared—

“Out with your purses, my pretty pair, or I’ll spoil your beauty—out——”

But the speaker, who was mounted on a restless horse, thrust his pistol just an inch or so too far forward and Jack Churchill made a grasp for it He caught the flint of the hammer and the fingers that were on the stock and dragged the fellow’s arm up to the elbow through the window. Sarah did not scream—she only held her breath—as she saw her companion work round the man’s wrist until the pistol barrel pointed outside the carriage.

She did not even shriek when the man gave a yell of despair—she was even silent when the sound of the shot came and the roof of the man’s skull was blown off, and Jack Churchill’s own pistol was smoking in his hand—his other hand, bleeding from a cut inflicted by the flint, grasping the bridle of the horse from which the body had dropped, after a horrible pause. She could not understand how Jack’s pistol came to be smoking. She had not seen him discharge it at a second man who had ridden up to the rescue of the first.

She had closed her eyes for a second—one of the five seconds that elapsed from the moment Jack had grasped the fellow’s pistol — and when she opened them it was to.see her lover in the act of mounting the horse from whose saddle the dead man had dropped. She sprang to the open door of the coach. Two men lay on the ground, but a third was flying at full gallop across the green, pursued by Jack Churchill on the horse whose reins he had secured. One of the horses of the coach was lying on the road; but the postillions had ceased their work at the traces; they were watching with eager eyes the chase of the fugitive.

She watched it also from the door of the coach.

The highwayman was well mounted, and he had got a good start The limit of the green was soon reached, and the man put his horse at a hurdle at the entrance to a ploughed field. The animal refused the leap at first, but when the rider dug at him with his spurs, he went over like a bird. The delay of a second or so gave his pursuer a chance. He judged the hurdle well, and the postillions cheered him when he cleared it.

Along the heavy soil both horses went well, but it was plain that Jack was the lighter weight and the better rider, for he had gained considerably upon the fugitive before the brown of the ploughed field melted into the green of a meadow in which cattle were grazing. This meadow sloped upward, and in the frantic race for the gate at the further end, the light weight of the pursuer gave him a distinct advantage.

And then the red rays of the setting sun flashed upon the sword that Churchill drew.

“He is sure o’ him,” said a postillion. “I’ll give four to one that the Captain cuts him down in the meadow.”

He had scarcely spoken before the flying highwayman glanced over his shoulder and drew a pistol that still remained in his holster. Sarah Jennings saw him turn half-way round in his saddle, apparently taking a steady aim at his pursuer. Suddenly Churchill’s horse gave a swerve to the right at the very instant that the puff of smoke appeared.

“Good fellow!” yelled the postillions. “His honour pulled round at the right second.”

Then the girl saw him give his horse the spur, and in a second she knew what was meant by a cavalry charge. He had sent his horse flying at the other with outstretched head—he was down on his enemy like a hurricane made visible—she saw him rise in his stirrups and she saw the flash of the steel—a fork of lightning out of the centre of the hurricane.

His horse was far beyond that of the highwayman in a second, and it seemed that the man was unhurt Certainly half a minute had passed before the figure began to sway and sway horribly—to and fro—from side to side—his head fell forward right upon his horse's mane. When his feet were released from the stirrups he went with a jerk over the animal's head, and the frightened horse failed to clear the body.

“’'Tis all over,” said one of the postillions. “Lord, my father used to tell us of Edgehill and Prince Rupert I know what 't was like now.”

“So do I,” cried Sarah, and the men laughed.

They remained where they were standing for some minutes. They saw Captain Churchill dismount beside the man and raise his head. Then they were startled at the sound of a groan from one of the two men who were lying on the road forgotten in the excitement of the chase for life and death which they had been watching.

“May I never mount saddle again if it beant Ben the Bolter hisself,” cried the postillion who was the first to reach the surviving highwayman.

And what he said was the truth. The survivor of the gang was the notorious Ben the Bolter.

They placed him very carefully, under the direction of Captain Churchill, across the springs in front of the coach, and it was found that his arm only had been shattered by the pistol bullet.

During the remainder of their drive to London, Miss Jennings had no reason to complain of the moroseness of her lover. His mood had passed, and he was in the most buoyant spirits.

When the coach drove into Whitehall, it was met by the King, Buckingham and Sedley.

“Welcome back, Jack,” cried the King. “Have you met with any adventures by the way?”

“Oh, your Majesty, we were attacked by highwaymen—such ill-looking wretches!” cried Miss Jennings.

“Ill-looking wretches Til swear they were!” said the King between his bursts of laughter.

“Ay, sir; but Jack—Mr. Churchill, I mean— killed them all,” she cried.

“Bravo, Jack—Jack the Giant-killer!” said the King. “What a pity ’tis that you did not bring their bodies home.”

“Nay, sir; I would not turn your Majesty’s coach into a hearse,” said Jack. “But I brought a specimen of the gang—one Ben the Bolter. The fellows are unstrapping him from the leathers.”

“’Snails!” said the merry monarch after a pause.

“He belonged to the second gang,” said Miss Jennings. “We were attacked twice. All the first gang escaped, and that was a pity, for I dare swear that they deserved hanging quite as well as the other rascals.”

“I do not doubt it, madam,” said the King politely.

CHAPTER V.

THE COMEDY OF A POOR ACTRESS.

“’Tis never Master Robert!” cried old Margetson, the butler, uplifting his hands as the postillion pulled up the post-chaise with a flourish at the porch of the Hall, and the Honourable Robert Cholmondeley dismounted. ‘Tis never Master Robert!” he said again, in more subdued tones, as the young gentleman passed through the great oaken doors and began unbuttoning his riding cloak.

“Why should it not be the person you name as well as any other person, Noah, my friend?” said Mr. Cholmondeley. “What is there remarkable about this special visit of mine to the old house that you should look at me as if I were a ghost?”

“Why, nothing, sir—oh, nothing—only——”

“Eh? Only?—only what, sirrah?”

“Oh, nothing, sir—nothing, only—well, I’m not supposed to know anything about it”

“About it? It? What do you mean by ‘it’ my friend?”

“Oh, nothing, Master Robert; nothing worth talking about, especially as everyone knows ’tis not true.”

“Faith, Noah, if ’tis the Hampshire idea that something is not worth talking about because it happens to be untrue, it differs somewhat from the Whitehall notion. ’Twould seem that there nothing is worth talking about unless ’tis untrue.”

“Maybe that, sir; maybe that Anyhow you’re looking well enough, Master Robert, and if ’twas true, you wouldn’t be that, sir.”

“If what was true? Harkye, my old fox, I want to hear all that you know—all that mine uncle knows.”

“I’m not supposed to know anything about it, whatever the master may, sir.”

“Well, I’m quite content to suppose that you know nothing about it, but at the same time I insist on hearing all that you do know, without any supposition. Come along and get me some breakfast. You can tell me something at least of what you know while I am breaking my fast—the remainder you will doubtless need to hold over—you know so much, I clearly perceive.”

“What sort of an old fool am I growing into anyway—never asking you if you had. a mouth on you, Master Robert? If you go to your own room, sir, I’ll have hot water sent to you in a jiffy, and you’ll find breakfast laid for you when yoq come down. Well, I am an old fool, to be sure!”

“To be sure of anything in this uncertain world is to be a fool, whether old or young, Noah.”

Having delivered this cynical saw, the young man went up the broad shallow stairs to the room which he was in the habit of occupying when on a visit to his uncle, Sir Jasper Cholmondeley, sometime his Majesty’s ambassador to the Low Countries.

The butler shook his head. He did not like to hear moral sentiments expressed by young men. His experience had led him to believe that when a young man gave expression to a moral sentiment, especially one bearing upon the uncertainty of mundane matters, he was in a perilous way.

He shook his head and abused the lackey for his clumsiness in knocking the portmanteau against the wall as he shouldered it to carry it upstairs. All the time he was laying the breakfast-table he maintained that shaking of the head, now and again sighing lugubriously, and quite as frequently indulging in a chuckle, not wholly devoid of hilarity. The most conscientious of butlers—nay, even Noah Margetson himself—looks forward with mixed feelings to a meeting between an elderly gentleman, with a reputation for irateness to maintain, and a favourite nephew who has shown a disposition to take a serious step in life without duly consulting his relations.

When, however, the particular nephew who was in his mind at that moment, descended the stairs and entered the small dining-room, on the table of which a magnificent game pie stood by the side of a great round of beef on a silver dish, and surrounded by several other tempting viands, the butler was a butler once more—grave as a parson whose hopes of a rural deanery have dwindled into vagueness—dignified as an alderman who is uncertain if the stability of the Mayor’s chair will remain unimpaired until the end of the year.

"My uncle still breakfasts in his room, I take it for granted, Noah,” said the young gentleman. “How has his appetite been of late?”

“As usual, sir; pretty much as usual,” replied the butler. “That is to say, sir, when his liver is in good working order his appetite is so good that he puts it out of gear again in the course of a day or two.”

“And then he’s pretty trying to the people around him?” said Mr. Cholmondeley. “I wonder how his liver is to-day?”

“I should say ’twill be very bad to-morrow, sir,” replied Noah. “He took a dish of umbles for his breakfast at seven, followed by a slab of game pie and a tankard of spiced ale.”

“Faith, Noah, I think you have evidence sufficient to enable you to say that he will not be on speaking terms with his liver to-morrow.”

“Swearing terms, Master Robert — swearing terms.”

“Then 'tis lucky I came to-day. Will he see me, do you think, knowing all that you know?” “Well, sir, you see Pm supposed to know nothing about it; but isn’t there a lady, sir—leastways a female?”

“Yes, there’s a lady. What then?”

“If so be that she is a lady, Master Robert, you can both come to terms, I’m sure.”

“What do you mean by both of us? Do you mean that the lady and I can come to terms?”

“I’m afraid that you’ve done that already, sir. It’s the master and you, I mean, sir. Oh, lud, lud! It’s never true that his lordship, your father, sir, has given his consent?”

“And you’re the man that’s supposed to know nothing about this business! Go along, you old rascal! I’m beginning to think that you know more about it than I do myself.”

“Oh, no, no, sir; I wouldn’t dare to presume so much. But they say that the looker-on sees most of the game. Now why don’t you young bloods ask the opinion of a looker-on before you take to falling in love and such-like?”

“Ah, Noah, why doesn’t a blind man on the brink of a precipice take the advice of a looker-on? Then you don’t think I’ve much chance of getting the consent of my uncle?”

“The only thing he’ll consent to is to pay the female—the lady, I mean, sir—a fair sum to let you go free.”

“And if he suggests that, Noah, I swear that I’ll break his head, were he ten times my uncle, and an hundred times as wealthy. When my father, who is the head of the family, has given his consent—”

“And they say she’s a play-actress, sir—ay, and an Irishwoman to boot.”

Mr. Cholmondeley did not reply; he cut another slice off the sirloin, and looked at it contemplatively for some moments as it lay on his plate.

“Good Lord, then it’s true; and you’re a lost man, sir!”

“A lost man? Well, perhaps—ah, I care not whether I am lost or not so long as I find her.”

“And any man who pays a shilling can see her every night at the playhouse, sir?”

“Nay, that is her sister, Mrs. Hart; she is one of the best of our ladies at the King’s House, Noah.”

“To say that she’s the best is not to say very much, sir, if all that I hear is true.”

“Oh, that'll do, Noah—that'll do.”

“I humbly ask your pardon, sir. I'm not supposed to know anything about it”

“And you don't in this particular case, at any rate, though I allow that in nearly every other matter your knowledge is surprising. I suppose my uncle will come down shortly now?”

“I shouldn't wonder, sir,” replied the butler. He felt rather hurt at being reproved by the young gentleman whom he himself had the privilege of reproving some twenty years before; but he was too much the butler to let his voice betray his feelings.

When Robert Cholmondeley strolled into the library he examined the new picture by Sir Peter Lely which his uncle had received from town, but the amount of interest which it aroused in his bosom was not great He was thinking more of Polly, Mrs. Hart's younger sister.

His father, Lord Cholmondeley, had given his consent to their engagement at the very moment when he had gone to Mrs. Hart to command her to send her aspiring sister out of the country, lest the honour of the family of Cholmondeley should be compromised by his son's marrying Miss Polly; but in place of Mrs. Hart, he saw Madam Ellen, and she had exercised her fascinations upon him, and he had yielded to them before she had begun her pleading on behalf of Miss Polly.

But though his lordship’s consent was thus gained, the ardent lover was not so ardent as to be blind to the advisability of obtaining the consent of his uncle, Sir Jasper, as well. Sir Jasper was unmarried and wealthy, and had always had a great affection for his nephew.

Young Mr. Cholmondeley knew that his uncle was full of prejudices against the stage—nearly as full of them as he himself had been before he had met Polly, and quite as full of them as his father had been before he had that interview with Polly’s friend. He was not without hope, however, that his uncle would come to look at the matter in a reasonable light Surely when he would hear that Polly was the most charming girl in existence— that she had lived at a convent since her childhood, and had never come within the baleful influence of the playhouse, he could no longer maintain his foolish prejudices.

The great mullioned window of the library looked into a Dutch garden bright with tulips of many colours, for Sir Jasper had acquired the passion for tulips during his residence among the Dutch, and was one of the most enthusiastic of growers long before tulip culture had become, as it did in the next reign, the craze of the wealthy. Robert stood at the window wondering how any man could devote his life to the cultivation of bulbs when so many greater interests were within his reach. He turned away from the window with an exclamation of impatience, and glanced at the timepiece. His uncle would not, he knew, be downstairs for at least twenty minutes, and twenty minutes seemed to him to be a long time. He picked up from a small writing-table a translation of Van Myne’s famous treatise on bulb growing, but before he had time to glance at a page, he became aware of a gentle tapping on a pane of the window. Glancing round he gave a cry of astonishment, for outside stood his beloved Polly.

She was wearing a riding-cloak whose satin quilted hood made a charming frame for a charming face. Her large brown eyes were glowing, and so were her cheeks. The expression of mock fear which was upon her face at that moment, was very pretty, especially as it quite failed to conceal the smile which it overlaid.

He ran to the window and threw it open on its hinges, whispering—

“Heavens above! How did you come hither, my dearest girl?”

“Why, how but by coach and post-chaise?” replied the girl. “Oh, yes, Nell Gwyn—I mean, Madam Ellen—paid for the trip—it was Nell who suggested it, so of course she pays for it.”

“She does; but take care that you and I don’t pay dearly for this trip—yes, very dearly,” he said, helping her into the room.

“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” said Polly. “I did not know that you were here, of course; and I thought that if Nell could prevail, as she did with your father, why should I not prevail with your uncle?”

“Oh, that’s what you thought, is it?” said he, holding her hand, but keeping his eyes somewhat anxiously upon the door. “Yes, quite right, my dearest, only you are not so good an actress as Nell Gwyn—Heaven forbid that you should ever be so.”

“Ah, but if she succeeded so well when merely acting, how much more easily shall not I, when I feel everything that I may say?”

“’Tis a nice question of art, my child,” said he. “Better say, a question of arts. And you really came down here in the hope of being admitted to the presence of my uncle and then of prevailing upon him?”

“And why should I not have such a hope, sir? Sir Jasper Cholmondeley is not the Grand Lama of Thibet, is he?” she cried.

“I know nothing about the Grand Lama, my dear, but I know quite enough of my unde to believe that so mad a scheme—and yet—wdl, on my soul, your scheme doesn’t seem so mad a one after all. Could anyone be in your presence and fail to yield to the gracious influence of your beauty? But such a scheme! Oh, Polly, you are a sweet innocent!”

"Nay, not so innocent, neither;” there was a note of repudiation in her voice. "Nay, I had planned out a regular system of attack. Did not you tell me that he had given himself up to the cultivation of tulips?”

"And what of that?”

"What of that? Well, I also have given myself up to it If I cannot gain an approach to him by that means, I shall e’en have to go to my grave without ever seeing him.”

"Beyond a doubt, you are an adroit little plotter, Polly. But I think you should have left Madam Ellen to carry out this business for you as well as t’other. Why, she won over my father in less than half an hour.”

“Well, we have arranged—Nell and I—that if I fail, she is to have a chance. She came down with me here, and awaits me at the Royal Charles Inn. Oh, ’twill surely be strange if between us we do not win over your uncle. Now, why is he not down, so that I can begin my scheme? Tis quite provoking that, when a scheme has been adroitly planned, the person against whom it is designed holds aloof. Tis not fair, I protest”

“He will be here soon enough, madam. Ah, yes, I hear his voice on the lobby at the head of the staircase.”

“Oh, lud! His voice, did you say? Oh, why did I ever leave London? Good-bye, Robert; I’ll take the chaise back.”

She had run to the window.

“You might do worse,” he said. “At anyrate, if I can’t win over my uncle, I’ll join you at the inn.”

“You! The idea of you winning him over!” she cried. “Oh, I’ll not go back to the chaise until I have seen him. Pm not afraid. He’s only—”

“He’s outside the door,” said Robert.

She went out by the window and ran round the corner of the house. He had scarcely closed the window before Sir Jasper entered the room.

“Well, sir,” he cried. “What brings you down here from the midst of your routs and your drums and your spadille tables?”

“I trust, sir,” said Robert, “that I have a sufficient sense of my duty to——”

“Don’t talk to me of your sense of duty, you young rascal!” cried Sir Jasper. “You have come down here to try to obtain my consent to a match that would be idiotic were it not disgraceful. You fancy that I will succumb to the wiles of your play-actress, as your father did.”

“Nay, sir, I only hope that you will listen to reason. You have always listened to reason,” said Robert “I’ll listen to reason when I’ve a chance of hearing it, but I’ll take my oath that I’ll not listen to a fool of a lover in the hope of hearing reason from him.”

“Enough, sir; I will not make the attempt to obtain your ear. I own to being a lover, sir, and I hope that I shall never be other than a lover.”

“That means you hope you will never marry.”

The sneer of the old man was very malignant “Upon that particular matter I have made up my mind, sir,” said Robert. “You have always been good enough to make me an allowance; I will not ask you to continue it, sir.”

“You need not, you rascal, if you marry that play-actress.”

“She is not an actress, sir; she only appeared once in a stage piece, and then she was not a success.”

“She would not thank you for your advocacy. The worst of them would rather be a success on the stage than respectably wedded.”

“I have no wish to talk more, sir. I have no interest at home; but I can go to the Dutch Indies, where I know the name of my uncle will act as my passport to success.”

“Go to the Indies, sir; nay, there's a hotter place still; go there.”

The young man bowed and left the room.

For about five minutes the old man stamped to and fro muttering, with the qualification of a few full-bodied oaths in Dutch—

“Pll never consent—never! I'm not a weak-minded fool like my brother. Nay, thank Heaven I'm made of other stuff.”

But when he seated himself in his chair and his eyes fell naturally upon the portrait of a boy with fair hair blowing about his face, as he sat on a mossy stone by the side of a brook, he ceased to mutter. His thoughts went back to the days when he had had that portrait painted—when the boy who appeared in it had made the old house delightfully noisy with his romping. What a boy he had been!

And that was the boy whom he had just insuited—whom he had sent out to the Indies when he might have made him happy at home by giving him the contents of one of those iron boxes which lay in his cellar.

He began to think that, if his nephew were really to go to the Indies, he would never see the boy again; and under the influence of this thought, he softened so greatly that when, raising his eyes, he perceived the figure of a very lovely girl engaged in sketching, by the aid of coloured chalks, a flam-ing bed of his tulips, he did not ring the bell and tell Margetson to order the impudent hussy out of the garden. He remained in his chair, and was sufficiently observant of the young woman to make it impossible for her to pluck a single flower without his detecting her in the act.

She gave no sign of wishing to pluck the flowers, and he was rather sorry for that; he would have dearly liked to detect her, and then forgive her, for he was in so soft a mood he would have been ready to forgive so flagrantly pretty a girl even for plucking one of his tulips.

She continued working diligently until her drawing-paper had become crimson with flowers. Suddenly turning her head, however, she saw the man who was standing at the window, and her face became the colour of the tulips. He saw her look from right to left, as if seeking for some way of escape, and he gave a laugh.

"Zooks, the lad hath taste, to say the least of it,” he muttered. "And he’s right; she is but a poor actress. She doesn’t seem to think that I would have sense enough to say, ‘Why the mischief don’t you run away, my good girl, if you are so fluttered?’ But by the Lord, she’s a pretty young baggage, and I’ll humour her.”

He unfastened the window and opened it She gave a low courtesy—a very good imitation of the courtesy of a fluttered maid, he thought; but he was wrong in assuming that it was an imitation: it was the real thing.

"Madam,” said he politely, “you do me much honour in visiting my poor garden.”

"Oh, sir, you are vastly polite,” she said in anything but a self-possessed voice, and after another courtesy, she looked about anxiously once more, as if desirous of escaping. She was improving in her acting, he thought.

"Nay, dear madam,” he cried, "even a bear would not be insensible to the charm of the picture which met my eyes when I looked up from my studies. Should I seem a curmudgeon if I were to confess to you my inability to recall the occasion of our previous meeting?”

"Ah, sir, that is why I am overcome,” she said, looking modestly on the ground. He felt certain that he had never seen such long eyelashes. She had often been told by the girls in the convent that she looked to the greatest advantage when glancing down.

“Overcome, madam?”

“Yes, sir; the fact is that we have never met before. I do not belong to this part of the country, but, hearing about your tulips — your wonderful tulips—and also that you were not in the habit of coming downstairs until late in the morning, I thought that perhaps I might venture to —to—oh, sir, pray pardon a foolish girl! I am a tulip enthusiast”

“A tulip enthusiast? Prithee say no more, my dear madam. A tulip enthusiast! Pray honour my poor house by entering it, madam, and we shall exchange views on the only topic worth discussing in these degenerate days. Nay, madam, I insist What, am not I old enough, if not good enough, to be your father?”

“You are kind enough, at anyrate, sir; I fear that you are not old enough.”

Once more she modestly allowed her eyes to turn from his face to the ground, as she stepped past his bowing figure into the room.

“Nay, madam, you are, I dare swear, a sad flatterer of an old man. Well, perhaps I am not so old after all; age is nothing more than a matter of opinion. Is not that your view?”

“Oh, certainly, sir. Age is nothing more than a matter of opinion—yes; of Opinion and—and years —nothing more.”

“Ah, at last I have found a sensible woman— but you are not old enough to be called a woman, my dear.”

“That is also a matter of opinion, sir.”

“Nay, madam, that skin—as soft as the finest fabric of Cashmere, I am sure—that mantling blush —those eyes, with lashes whose jealousy of the eyes they hide becomes a virtue—these, leaving out all mention of that figure which suggests nothing so nearly as a lily flower swayed by a zephyr, tell of the springtime of life. You will seat yourself, my child, while we talk of our tulips.”

“I am greatly afraid, sir, that I must——”

“Afraid, madam? Why should you be afraid in my house—the house of one old enough to be your —well, shall we say brother, this time? Yes, i’faith,

I feel myself old enough to be your brother—your elder brother, of course.”

“I think I should like to have a brother—an elder brother—such as you, sir. ’Tis the sweetest of all relationships.”

“I would fain agree with you, madam. Only a short time ago I believed with all my heart that the dearest of all relation was a nephew—but now you have convinced me that I was wrong.”

“Nay, sir, nay; I had quite forgot the nephew, when I spoke of the brother. Oh, sir, there is no relation so sweet as a nephew. I should be very good to my nephew if it pleased Heaven to give me one, I would cherish him, and surely it should be my duty to accept his judgment on all matters.” “His judgment, madam? I protest that I scarce understand you. How could it be your duty to accept his judgment on all matters! Assume, for instance—’tis merely for the sake of argument— that your nephew fancied he had fallen in love with—”

“Ah, I should feel that I must do all that lay in my power to bring about their union. What, sir, cannot you perceive that this would clearly be my duty?”

“I perceive that you have never had a nephew, madam.”

“Alas? Providence has not been so kind to me. If I had—”

“You would like to have one?”

“Oh, sir—but I fear—supposing I were to tell you that I had neither sister nor brother, sir?”

“I should not feel for you greatly, madam, knowing that it rested with you whether you would accept the sweetest of all relationships—a nephew.”

“How could I become possessed of a nephew if—

“Listen to me, madam. Were you sincere when you said just now that you did not think me so very old?”

“Assuredly, sir; but—

“Pardon me. Am not I old enough to be your father?”

“Oh, well, sir, if you insist on my answering you candidly, I should—should——

“I should evade as politely as possible answering such a question.”

“Ah, an evasion is equal to an affirmative. Then, madam—dear madam, the man who is old enough to be your father is certainly not too young to be your lover.”

“Great heaven, sir! Do you mean—oh let me go away.”

“Nay, sweet one, I have a nephew.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then cannot you see how he may become yours?”

“Mine—mine?”

“Yours—your nephew?”

She looked at him and then glanced anxiously in the direction of the window. He was about to take a step toward her, and she was about to take a step toward the window, when the door was knocked at, and a moment after Margetson appeared.

“What the devil do you want, you blundering fool?” shouted Sir Jasper.

“Oh, sir! I’m not supposed to know anything about it, but Master Robert wishes to know if you have any commands for the Indies, sir,” said the butler. “He bids me tell you he will be here presently to say good-bye.”

“Let him come—the sooner the better; and let him go—the sooner the better,” shouted Sir Jasper.

“Very good, sir,” said Margetson. He did not shake his head until he was face to face with Mr. Cholmondeley at the end of the corridor.

“Now, my dear lady, I must entreat of you, for a few moments—only a few moments,” said Sir Jasper, laying his hand on the girl’s arm and persuading her to go toward the door which led to a small writing-room.

“Nay, sir, I would go away—I must.”

“Sweet one, I insist. What, am I not to be master in my own house?”

She retreated to the door which he opened. He bowed to her, with his hand on the lock, saying,—

“Only for a few minutes. You shall have an experience of my nephew, and if you like him he may be yours as well as mine.”

In an instant he had shut her into the room, in spite of her protest. He turned away with a laugh, and when she opened the door an inch or so and put her eye to the opening, she saw that he was laughing.

Then her lover appeared at the door of the library.

“I could not go without saying good-bye, sir,” he said. “You have always been the kindest of uncles to me.”

“I have always tried to do my duty to you, Robert,” said Sir Jasper. “And in this particular matter—the point on which we have disagreed—I also tried to do my duty. You have only to tell me now that you abandon that foolish idea of yours regarding that young woman, and we shall be friends once more. Eh, what do you say?”

“If it were anything else, sir, you would find me not wanting in respect for your wishes.”

“You are still determined to marry that one female?”

“I am sorry that ’tis a point of honour with me, sir. Yes, sir; I shall marry her or remain single all my life.”

“You say that quite briskly, sir; but do you know what ’tis to remain single for a lifetime?”

“I think I do, sir. My life up to the present has given me an experience which entitles me to speak on this subject with the confidence of an expert”

“And now you are four-and-twenty. And you are prepared to give me an assurance that it is not good for a man to be alone?”

“Beyond a doubt, sir, ’tis true. Oh, yes; you may take my word for it.”

“Ah, indeed. Well, nephew, I may tell you frankly that I am rather pleased than otherwise to have this from so excellent an authority as you claim to be. The fact is, my boy, that I’ve recently—yes, recently come to your way of thinking. I am an old man now, Robert”

“Nay, sir, you are not old. You are in the prime of life—mellow manhood, sir, I swear.”

“You think so, really, nephew?”

“On my word of honour, sir.”

“Give me your hand, my boy. Fm glad you think so. The fact is that I have had some little experience also of a single life—yes, fifty-six years. Of course I don’t pretend that I’ve sounded all the depths of unmarried life as you have, but still—well, I’ve made up my mind for some time—some little time—to try the alternative.”

“You mean, sir, that—that you intend to marry?”

“Why should I not, nephew?”

There was a considerable pause before the nephew said in a low voice—

“Why not, indeed, sir, if—if——”

“If I find the right lady to be my wife, you would say. Ah, I don’t think you will take exception to my choice, my boy. She is everything that is exquisite, sir; and she has certain definite-views regarding the relationship of a nephew. I shall be proud to present her with a nephew.”

“Great heavens, sir! You mean to say that you have found the woman?”

“I have found her, my boy. And what’s more, she is in this house at present.”

“Oh, Lord!”

“She was with me here just now, but, poor little fluttered dove! her modesty would not permit her to remain.”

“Why, it cannot be possible that Polly——”

“Polly? Who spoke of Polly, sir? The lady of my choice is here, sir. Madam, may I beg that you will honour us?”

He had opened the door of the ante-room, and as Miss Polly came forth, he offered her his hand. She was looking demurely down.

“This, sir, is the lady,” said Sir Jasper, leading her toward his nephew.

The nephew made a mock bow of great intensity, and then roared with laughter.

“Hey, what is the meaning of this, sir?” cried Sir Jasper. “Your reception of the lady is not what I expected, nephew. Your levity—gross levity, sir—is at this moment little short of indecorous—not to say indecent”

“I beg you a thousand pardons, sir; only let me tell you that this is the lady who has promised to be my wife.”

“What! Is’t possible that I have been harbouring a snake among my tulips? Madam, speak. Did not I make my intentions plain to you just now?”

“Indeed you did, sir,” said the young lady, demurely.

“And what do you say in reply to me, madam?”

“Oh, what is left for me to say, sir? I am overwhelmed with your generosity. I may have fancied that I loved Mr. Cholmondeley, sir; but I had not seen you then. Now, however—oh, Sir Jasper, I throw myself into your arms.”

And before he had recovered from his astonishment she actually had thrown herself into his arms.

“For Heaven’s sake, nephew, take her, take her,” gasped Sir Jasper, his face suggesting the purple east as he tried to disengage himself from her. “Madam, you have made a mistake: you should not have taken me seriously. I was in jest—in jest, I tell you. Oh, my boy, for Heaven's sake, relieve me. Now my dear madam——”

“What, sir," cried the lady, taking her arms from about his neck, and facing him with flashing eyes. “What, sir; have I been your dupe?"

“Nay, nay, madam,” he said. “I only meant——For the Lord's sake, nephew, catch her! She is going to do it again.”

The nephew being adroit, it was into his arms she fell as Sir Jasper made a rush for the window and disappeared headlong among his tulips.

It was on this account he failed to hear the shrieks of laughter that came from Miss Polly Hart, the poor actress.

CHAPTER VI.

THE COMEDY WHICH BECAME A TRAGEDY.

“My good creature,” said Mr. Killigrew, the Master of the Revels and the Manager of the King’s Playhouse, Drury Lane, “my good creature, ’twere vain to deny the truth of all that you have said so eloquently with your voice and so entrandngly with your eyes, on the subject of William Shakespere. I have always held that he was a dramatist of the highest rank. His Grace the Duke of Buckingham goes still further, and avers that Shakespere was the Buckingham of his day.”

“His Grace’s flattery is overwhelming,” said Mrs. Hughes, with only the least little curl of her lip.

“Ay; but ’tis in your mind, my good woman, that ’tis the Duke of Buckingham whom he flatters, not William Shakespere,” said Killigrew, who had noted, with his customary care, the little expression of disdain on the very pretty face before him.

“Nay, Mr. Killigrew, I will not deny that I hold William Shakespere to have been the greatest man that ever lived, while I know that the Duke of Buckingham is—is—the most impudent; there, I have said it, Mr. Killigrew,” cried the actress.

“Nay, now ’tis you who are flattering overmuch to his Grace,” said Killigrew. “In these evil days in which it is our good fortune to live, Mrs. Hughes, the impudent fellows are held in the highest esteem. Even I myself, though the manager of the King’s Playhouse, have but an indifferent reputation for impudence. Did not I once try to kiss you, Mrs. Hughes?”

“I have a short memory in such matters, sir,” said the actress with a flush and a laugh. “But, so please you, sir, the business part of our audience has not yet come to an end,” she continued. “You have not yet said wherein Iieth the difficulty of playing Shakespere’s tragedy of ‘Othello.’”

“Why, Mrs. Hughes, that same tragedy has never yet been played with a woman in the character of the blackamoor’s wife—what d’ye call her?”

“Desdemona is her name. But the man was not a blackamoor.”

“What was he, then?”

“He was only a Moor—and of a very different colour.”

“Believe me, dear madam, the stage knows none of these gradations in tint. There are white men on the stage, and all the rest are black. I would be afraid of the consequences of presenting to the playgoers so gross a spectacle as that of a black man cutting the throat of a young and lovely lady such as you are, my dear.”

“But he does not cut her throat: he only smothers her with a pillow.”

“Good lud, madam, you are in a quibbling mood to-day. Is not the young woman as stone-dead at the end as if the negro-man had slit her weazand?”

Mrs. Hughes lifted up her hands and roared with laughter; and at this moment the half-open door of the green-room was pushed to the wall, and there danced in a gorgeously dressed and very beautiful young woman. It was Nell Gwyn.

“Pray tell us what is the jest, my Caroline?” she cried. “A jest that maketh one person merry and the rest glum is the jest for me. Tis sure to have spice in’t. I’faith, Killigrew, if you were wise you would e’en make the endeavour to bring the jest from the green-room to the stage. Mr. Dryden’s last two comedies proved as wanting in wit as they were in morals. Now, I know too much of playwriting and play-acting to look for morality in a comedy, but we can’t spare the wit.”

“And that is the first word to the point that hath been said in this room to-day,” cried Mrs. Hughes; "and it hath been said by Nell Gwyn.” “Well, where’s the moral in that, dear creature, when the only two people in the room up to the entrance of Nell Gwyn were Tom Killigrew and Mrs. Hughes?” said Nell. “What was the subject of your pointless discourse, good people? I have come to find a new dress for our masque at Hampton Court, but I can wait”

“The beautiful Mrs. Hughes hath been asking an impossibility,” said Killigrew.

“What, hath she been looking for Tom Killigrew to tell her the truth?” cried Nell.

“Nay, Nelly, I have but asked him to let ‘Othello’ be played, so as to give me a chance of appearing as Desdemona. The part hath never yet been played by a woman, and ’tis plain to me that it could never be faithfully played by one of the boys,” said Mrs. Hughes eagerly.

“And I say that while the playgoers might stand the strangling of one of the boys——”

“By the lud, Tom, they will stand such a strain upon their tenderness without flinching,” cried Nell, interrupting the manager. “I’ll swear that I could e’en strangle some of them myself, they play the women’s parts so vilely.”

“That is my contention,” said Killigrew. “They will tolerate the deadly slaughter of a boy in a night smock, and still smile; but they will speedily hustle off the stage any black negro-man who would go about the murder of a young woman who is a young woman, and a very lovely young woman into the bargain.”

"And what is this play you are talking about?” asked Nell. ’Tis sure not ‘The Indian Prince.’”

"Nay, the play is ‘Othello/” said Mrs. Hughes.

"An early work of Mr. Dryden's?” suggested Nell.

"Good lud, no; 'tis by William Shakespere,” said Mrs. Hughes.

“Oh, the grand-uncle of Tom—Betterton, of the Duke’s House?” said Nell.

“The same,” replied Mrs. Hughes.

"Ah, that accounts for my knowing nought about it,” said Nell. "I have often heard of William Shakespere, but, 'snails, sir, however much one may like Tom Betterton, one cannot be expected to spell through a doleful tragedy simply because it was writ by his grand-uncle. Nay, the heartiest friendship hath its limits.”

“William Shakespere hath some claim to be read, quite apart from his relationship to Mr. Better-ton,” said Mrs. Hughes. "And as for his tragedy of ‘Othello,' well, I do not believe that Mr. Dryden at his best hath ever writ anything more elevating.”

“Elevating!” shrieked Nell. “Oh, lud! the notion of me reading aught that is elevating! Look ye, Caroline Hughes, for a play to be elevating is a step beyond a play being dull. Now, Mr. Dryden is often dull, but his worst foes could never accuse him of being elevating. But come, Mr. Killigrew, tell us what this play in dispute is about, and I will decide if Mrs. Hughes should be permitted to have her own way in regard to it.”

“You are an unprejudiced judge, Nell, you will not give a decree in favour of Shakespere simply because you are a friend of his grand-nephew,” said Killigrew. “Well, my dear, this play of ‘Othello’ treats of the love of a Moor for a beautiful lady named Desdemona. He gets her to run away with him, in order that he may have a chance of making a speech in the court where he is summoned by the lady's father. The poet artfully refrains—doth he not, Mrs. Hughes?—from explaining why the father objects to the match, seeing that he had always treated Othello as an equal, and thrown the lovely Desdemona in his way. Well, then, there comes a naughty fellow—”

“Ah, now the play interests me,” said Nell. “The naughty fellow always interests me—ay, and everyone else.”

“His name is—what is his name?—oh, never mind; he, out of the pure love of fun, makes Othello jealous of his wife, and he cuts her throat—no, he smothers her with a down pillow, and when someone rushes in to tell him he did wrong, he runs the villain through the vitals, makes a speech—he never loses an opportunity of making a speech—and then, to save his hearers from dying of the vapours, he stabs himself to the heart Isn’t that the play, Mrs. Hughes?”

“But what is the object of it all?” cried Nell.

“Oh, the object is plain enough,” said Killigrew. “’Tis to show, first, that one should never become on terms of familiarity with black men, and, secondly, that officers in the army should never become jealous of their wives—they’re not worth it.”

“And what have you to say to all this, Mrs. Hughes?” asked Nell.

“What have I to say?” cried Mrs. Hughes. “Ah, Nelly, what can I say if you have not read the play? For me to lift up my voice to plead for Shakespere would be to degrade him. Put all the wit of all the modems into one play and that play will contain less wit than the least of his comedies. Put all the tragical passion of all the moderns into one play and that play will be feeble by the side of a scene in ‘Othello.’”

“Oh, lud! and pray what else doth it contain?” said Nell. “Is there aught that would sting the Duchess of Cleveland—her that was the Countess of Castlemaine?”

“I have not yet read it with her Grace before mine eyes, but I dare swear that it abounds in lines which should sting her to the very quick,” said the actress.

“If you promise me that there is something in some scene that will sting her, I’ll plead with Mr. Killigrew on your behalf,” said Nell. “But mark you, her skin is thick: the sting must be sharp and heavy to touch her. An elephant is not even tickled by the sting of a gnat. None of your rapier thrusts will pierce her skin. Anything short of a battle-axe of satire would produce no impression on her.”

“Let me think—let me think,” said Mrs. Hughes. “I fancy there is some aptness—by the lud, I have it. Did not his Majesty break out in a passion when he accused her of too great fondness for Harry Jermyn?”

“Well, and if he did?” said Nell.

“Ah, so doth Othello when he accuses Desdemona of too great fondness for Cassio, who was also an officer in the army—he smothers her on that account. Oh, every scene will stab that creature to the heart,” cried the actress enthusiastically.

“Her heart—heart, did you say?” shrieked Nell. “Doth the play say aught about a woman’s living without a heart?”

“I promise you that it doth, though I cannot recall the exact lines,” said Mrs. Hughes. “Ah, I promise you that we shall make mincemeat of her; and the King, who is afraid to say to her face what he thinks of her, will hold us in high favour.”

“Psha!” cried Killigrew. “You have not convinced me that the playgoers will receive with high favour the strangling of a young woman by a burly blackamoor—ay, or brown-a-moor if that pleases you better. And so, Madam Ellen, you may set about the choice of your gown for the new masque at Whitehall.”

Mrs. Hughes pouted very prettily, and Madam Ellen said some very hard words regarding Killigrew’s unkindness, and then Mrs. Hughes left the green-room.

But for all that, two days afterwards the actress burst in upon her husband as he sat cooking a fish for dinner, and cried—

“Huzza—huzza, my love; the day is ours—the world is at our feet.”

“Then we shall e’en wipe our feet upon the world and eat a fresh Southwark plaice,” said the husband.

“Plaice! plaice me no plaice, sir, until you hear my news. What think you? Mr. Killigrew hath resolved that ‘Othello’ shall be played a fortnight from to-day, and I shall be the first woman to be seen as Desdemona. What thinks’t thou of that news?”

The husband laid the cooked fish on the table and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Desdemona—‘Othello’—I can scarce believe the good news,” said he. “Dear wife, think that whatever Fate may have in store for us, after the tragedy is played we shall have gained immortality —you as the first woman who played the part of Desdemona and I as your husband.”

He stretched out his arms to her, and she was so excited that she was about to throw herself into those arms, but at the last moment she remembered that she was wearing a comparatively new brocade —the gift of Nell Gwyn—which would most likely have to see Desdemona through three acts of the tragedy.

“Ah, you will have to moderate your transports, my James,” she said. “Your hands have been dealing with the fish, they would work ruin on my brocade.”

“That is the difference between a man and a woman,” said he mournfully. “A man is dreaming of immortality while a woman’s only dread is that her dress will be smirched. My beloved one, you shall be remembered through all ages as the first actress of Desdemona. People will talk of you hundreds of years hence, when the greatness of Shakespere is recognised as it deserves to be. Just now, alas!—But prithee, what has occured to cause Killigrew to revoke his original decree regarding ‘Othello’?’

“I cannot tell,” his wife replied. “I was quite startled when he sent for me on my entering the playhouse, and announced that he had made up his mind to put on ‘ Othello.’ ”

“It must be the King’s command; or perhaps Killigrew hath read the play,” suggested the man.

“Nay, that is too extravagant a notion,” she cried. “What, the manager of a playhouse read a play! Dear James, your imagination runs away with you sometimes! Nay, dear, I believe rather that we are in debt to Nell Gwyn for this favour.”

“And she is only interested in the play because she fancies something in it may sting her enemy Lady Castlemaine—I beg her Grace’s pardon—the Duchess of Cleveland, I should have said. Alas! poor Will Shakespere!”

“Good lud! he hath made us even forget our dinner,” cried the actress. “And you have cooked the fish as only you can,” she continued, looking at the plaice which was cooling on the table.

“Ah, my angel, what is one dimmer to such as you who will be supping for evermore among the immortals?” cried her husband.

“What, indeed?” she cried, and then in the exuberance of the moment, she threw her arms around her husband's neck and kissed him heartily on both cheeks.

But all the same she did her best to avert, for some time at least, the joys of immortality, by making an excellent dinner. Her husband had trained himself to become a capital cook, and thus he and his wife lived on the most affectionate terms. He not only relieved her of her responsibilities in this direction, he, in addition, taught her all she knew about her art, and had even brought her to appreciate in some measure the poetry of Shakespere. He also went so far as to contribute to the household purse by giving lessons in fencing.

He had had a chequered career. Educated for the priesthood in the reign of Charles I, he had joined the King's army in its conflict with the Parliamentary forces, and had suffered in consequence during the Interregnum. Before Charles II had been many years on the throne, James Hughes married Caroline Swift, and they had starved together very happily until the lady was permitted to join His Majesty’s Servants at the King’s Playhouse, where she quickly made a name for herself.

On this account, as well as by reason of her continued affection for her husband, she was by no means a favourite with the other members of the company, of whom the men were no better than they should have been, while the majority of the women were certainly a good deal worse.

While they were eating their frugal meal, the husband scarcely paused in his exultations. The playgoers were not always fools; they would quickly see how greatly superior Shakespere was to the best of the modems—how immeasurably greater “Othello” was than anything Dryden had ever written—how ridiculous it was to fancy that the part of Desdemona could be adequately played by a boy. To be sure the part had been played by a boy in Shakespere’s own day; but Shakespere had foreseen the day—this day—when a woman would arise to portray the character of the devoted innocent wife as it would be portrayed by Caroline Hughes.

Before they had finished their dinner a step sounded on the stairs, and the husband rose to open the door for their visitor, who was a pale-faced young man indifferently dressed. A look as of habitual gloom was on his face, and if he had mentioned casually that he had not been shaved for some days, no one would have disbelieved him.

“Ha, Charley, welcome, lad; we haven’t seen thee for a month,” said Hughes, as the man entered and bowed to the lady.

“Whither have you taken yourself that we never see you, Mr. Crisp?” she asked, removing a cloak from a chair to which she motioned him.

“We have some scraps of cold poultry to follow our fish,” said the husband. “You will not scorn such simple fare, I know, Charley.”

“I can eat nothing. She has returned to me,” said the man in a low voice, not looking at either the actress or her husband, but gazing out of the window.

There was a silence in the room when he had spoken. The shrill cries of the countless vendors of goods in the street came faintly up from below.

Some minutes had passed before Mrs. Hughes rose and laid a hand on Crisp’s shoulder from behind, putting another hand in one of his, as she said—

“You will not be cruel to her, Charley?”

He shook his head.

“No, I’ll not be cruel to her while she remains with me,” he said.

“Gracious Heaven, man, you do not think that she will leave you again for another,” said Hughes.

“Yes, she will leave me, and for another who will not desert her as that scoundrel Burt did,” said Crisp.

“Nay, my friend; you do her wrong,” said Hughes.

“You—you understand,” whispered Crisp to Caroline.

“I fear I understand but too well,” replied the actress. “Death——”

“I knew that you would understand,” he murmured. “Poor Henrietta, the bride of Death. She came back last night,” continued Crisp in a low tone. He had seated himself, and he spoke with his head bent over his knees. “I heard her voice outside—she was starving. When I carried her upstairs I scarce knew her. Not a feature remained of the girl I once loved.”

“Whom you love still,” said the actress.

The man shook his head.

“’Tis said that pity oft turns to love,” he murmured. “That may be so; but I know that ’tis sure that love may turn to pity. I think of her now only with pity. She will not live a month, the doctor saith.” There was another pause in the room. Then the man sprang to his feet with startling vehemence. His eyes blazed. His hands were clenched. “James Hughes,” he cried, “that man Burt is her murderer; but I have taken an oath before Heaven that the day she dies he shall die also. The hour that heaven receives her soul, his shall go down to the pit.”

He strode passionately to and fro, his face livid and his fingers working. Then with a sudden burst of tears and sobs and exclamations of endearment coupled with his wife’s name, he rushed out of the room and down the stairs, leaving the door open behind him.

Caroline wept silently where she sat.

“Poor lad, poor lad!” said her husband with a sigh as he shut the door. “You will go to see her, my love. She is still a woman. It is because she is a woman she suffers. Ah, that scoundrel Burt has had another victim.”

His wife dried her eyes and then said— “Killigrew has put Mr. Burt’s name down opposite Othello in his cast of the tragedy.”

Her husband gave a start; he looked in Caroline’s face for a few moments and then, taking her hand, said—

"You will go to see the poor woman. You will speak a word of comfort in her ears.”

"I will—I will indeed,” said his wife. "This evening—nay, this very hour. She is my sister—I account her to be my sister.”

Once again her tears came.

Mrs. Hughes had always shunned, as far as she was able to do so, Burt, the leading actor of Killigrew’s company. She had detested him from the first hour she had seen him. He was a vulgar and uneducated man who aped all the airs and graces and vices of a person of quality. He boasted openly of his amours and had more than once been horsewhipped for making too free with a lady’s name. He did his best to give circulation to the report that he had in his early years captivated Lady Castlemaine, and he now and again found people who believed that he had actually attained to that distinction.

It was probably with a view of putting the seal upon his reputation as a man of fashion, that he had pjayed an infamous part in regard to Henrietta Crisp, who occupied a subordinate place in the King’s House. Her husband, Charley Crisp, was a man of good family who had ruined his prospects by marrying her while he was still at Oxford. The two hundred pounds a year which his father allowed him would have been sufficient to keep him while he was studying the science of medicine; but before he had been married more than a year, he found that he had no time to study anything save the best way to keep his wife.

She was as foolish as she was pretty, and no one about the theatre was surprised when one day, on her husband’s return from a visit to the country, she came down to a rehearsal with Mr. Burt Charley Crisp was heartbroken at his wife’s treatment of him, but he was considerate enough to refrain from publishing his shame by means of a duel with her lover.

“She will return to me—she will return to me,” he had often said to Caroline Hughes and her husband.

He spoke the truth. After the lapse of a year, during which it was said that Burt treated her with the greatest brutality, she returned to her husband —to die.

Her knowledge of this incident did not tend to make Mrs. Hughes look on Burt with any greater favour than she had previously bestowed upon him. The fellow abated nothing of his odious swaggering, and when some of his boon companions rallied him in regard to her coldness of demeanour toward him, he had smiled significantly, saying—

“Ay, the pretty creature is the best actress in the company.”

“Actress! but we were talking of the woman herself, not what she pretends to be,” said one of his associates.

“Quite so. The woman pretends to be—well, what the woman herself is not,” said Burt “For a pretence of propriety Becky Marshall is clumsy compared to her, the sweet dissembler!”

“You mean—”

“I mean, sir, that the man who captivated a countess—nay, she is a duchess now—is not likely to be rebuffed by Caroline Hughes.”

And he really believed that her constant expression of dislike for him was only meant to draw him on. She had ignored him when they acted together in other plays, but it was impossible for her to maintain the same demeanour in rehearsing “Othello.” She was compelled to be with him on the stage for some hours every day, arranging the “business” that led up to the various situations of matchless power. He had thus many opportunities of exercising his fascinations upon her, and it need scarcely be said that he availed himself of all.

At the end of a week his net gains could be easily computed: he had won a single smile from her—no more.

Still this he regarded as distinct evidence that she was repenting of her former scorn of him, and that she meant to encourage him.

On this day her husband, as usual, walked home with her from the playhouse. They had scarcely started when he said—

“My dear wife, I should like very much to hear if you have aught to tell me regarding the play.”

“I have nothing to tell you,” she replied. “You saw all the rehearsal of the scenes to-day, did not you?”

“I saw—something.” said he. “Something that gave me a little shock of surprise.”

“What was that?” she inquired.

“You have confided nothing to mine ear, and therefore I cannot but think that mine eyes deceived me,” he said.

“Tell me what you saw—or fancied you saw,” she cried.

“I fancied that I saw that man—that scoundrel, Burt, press your hand and look into your face when the scene between you both was at an end.

There was a pause—an awkward pause—if it had lasted a few seconds longer it would have been a compromising pause, but she saved those few seconds—before she said—

“You were not deceived, my husband: the wretch had the impudence to hold my hand for some time —some moments. That was impudent, but no more than impudent.”

“Impudent! And why did you not confess to me that he had done so when I gave you the chance just now?”

“Well, the fact is, my dear, I knew that—’twas no more than the fellow’s impudence, and I did not wish you to be annoyed.”

“Heavens above us! you would lead that rascal on to save me from being annoyed.”

“Lead him on—lead Stephen Burt on—I——?

Oh, James, I am ashamed of you.”

“I shall never give you cause to be ashamed of me, madam, and I would fain hope that you will be equally generous toward me.”

He held up his head, and there was a certain subtle suggestion of coldness—of aloofness in that little movement of his. She felt it; and that was why she burst into a laugh—it really did not sound very forced—as she said with a pretty exaggeration of the already exaggerated Iago of Mr. Mohun—

“‘Beware, my lord, of jealousy!’”

Then she laughed again, and this time her laugh sounded very forced.

He remained solemn, and in an instant she became so also.

“My dear husband,” she said quietly. “Have I ever given you cause for uneasiness, even for a moment?”

"You have never acted Desdemona to Burt’s ‘ Othello,’ ” he replied coldly.

"Gracious heavens! you do not mean to suggest—”

"I mean to suggest nothing, madam. If the opportunity had not arisen, the fascination which that man seems to exercise over all women might have continued harmless so far as you are concerned.”

“Fascination! the fellow is detestable to me, I tell you. Oh, I am amazed—hurt—humiliated.”

"The amazement and humiliation are not on your side only, madam,” said Mr. Hughes, and so they reached their lodgings.

She was tearful as she went into the bedroom to lay aside her cloak. He followed her with his eyes, and when she was gone, he continued looking at the door through which she had passed. Then he gave a long sigh.

"’Tis a trial—a great trial for her, and much more so for me,” he murmured. "But I must be cruel only to be kind: I must force her to put herself in the situation of Desdemona—she must feel what ’tis to be innocent and yet accused—to be the unhappy wife of a jealous husband. Oh she must carry away the town by her acting of the character. Think of it! think of it! The first true representative of the greatest play ever writ by the hand of man! If she should fall short of what is needed for the true Desdemona, the play may be set back for another half-century! God forgive me for my cruelty; but it must be so—it must”

He was walking to and fro in the room before he had finished his mutterings, so that when his wife returned, he seemed to her to be the embodiment of a man consumed by the demon of jealousy. Then she fancied that she detected a wistful look in his eyes—it seemed to her that he was somewhat ashamed of himself; and, feeling this, her eyes also became wistful and she went to him with outstretched hands. He caught her hands in his own and kissed her warmly—only once, however; then he appeared to recollect his grievance—his imaginary grievance—against her, for he dropped her hands and turned away from her with a sigh.

She had too much pride to force herself upon him. She left the room without a word.

At the rehearsal of the tragedy the next day, Burt greeted her effusively—so effusively as to cause the other members of the company to glance significantly at one another. She would have liked to strike the fellow on the face and then leave the theatre for ever; but she knew that she could not afford to give way to her impulses. She had a full sense of her responsibilities toward the poet whom she had been taught by her husband to love; and she would do nothing that would jeopardise the success of the play.

That was why she suffered Burt without rebuke to press her hand, looking meaningly into her eyes, several times during the rehearsal, and that was why, when she found herself alone with him for a few minutes while waiting for a scene to be set, and he murmured in her ear—

"Beloved creature! my success on the night of the performance will be complete because the playgoers will perceive that the words of love which I speak to you come from my heart”—

She only shook her head and smiled.

She hurried away from him, though he tried to stop her; but when she had got to the other side of the stage, she glanced back at him. She could feel her cheeks flaming when she saw the smile that was upon his face. It was a leer that told her he felt sure of her.

She did not tell her husband of this incident, nor did she say a word to him of the letter which Burt slipped into her hand the next day—a letter full of passionate protestations and implorations. He had loved her for months, he declared in fervid language, but only since they had been brought so close together in the play had his passion become uncontrollable. Why was she so cold to him, when his heart told him she returned his affection? he asked. Why would she not trust her life to his keeping? Would not their happiness be more than earthly if she would but trust to his honour?

She read this letter when she was alone, and she crushed it in her hand, and then with blazing eyes and quivering fingers she tore it into shreds and scattered the shreds to the winds.

When she saw her husband next, he looked at her searchingly—almost insultingly. He seemed to know by instinct that she had come from reading that letter. He was about to speak to her, when Crisp entered to beg of her to come to see his wife—to take leave of her for ever. The doctor had assured him, he said through his sobs, that she could not last another day.

She hastened away with him, thereby evading the explanation with her husband which she felt was inevitable. She did not stay long by the side of the dying woman. The poor creature was now unconscious except at rare intervals, and Caroline perceived that the doctor’s prediction would be realised: she would not live for many hours.

On her way back to her lodgings she came face to face with Burt The hour was dusk, and the lane leading off Holborrn was narrow. She would have avoided him if she could, but it was clear to her that he had been lying in wait for her. He admitted as much.

He caught her hand, saying in a passionate whisper—

“My life, my soul, I saw you go forth, and I looked for you to return sooner. You got my letter? Ah, my Caroline, words are too feeble to express what is in my heart. You love me—I can swear that you love me.”

He had put an arm about her, and although she struggled, he was drawing her to him. She cried out, and making a great effort, freed herself. She stood before him with clenched hands, breathing quickly from the force of her struggle.

“Wretch—scoundrel—murderer!”she cried.

“How durst you talk of loving me? How durst you talk of my loving you, whom I loathe, not love? And now—now—at this moment when I come from the death-bed of one of your victims.”

“You are a mad woman!” he cried. “A mad woman! What do you mean?”

“I mean that you are the murderer of poor Henrietta Crisp as surely as if you had steeped your hands in her blood,” she said. “And you would murder me just as surely, were I to trust you for one hour. Move back, sir; let me pass.”

He did not move. It seemed to her that he was overcome by surprise. Had he never failed before, she wondered.

“Let me pass,” she cried again.

“Yes,” he said in a low voice. “Yes, I shall let you pass. But—what is’t that you have said?— murder—I a murderer? You have said it. You have said that I would murder you were you to trust me.” Then he put his face close to hers and she saw the malignant expression that it wore as he whispered—“You will be compelled to trust me once, and you have spoke your own doom.”

“Liar and villain!” she cried. “I will never trust you—never! You know it; you know that I will never cease to loathe you.”

He gave a laugh, then a mocking bow as he stood to one side and she walked past holding her head high.

Burt watched her until she had disappeared. Then he cursed through his set teeth, and struck the palm of his left hand with his right fist. He had played the villain so often on the stage that the technique of the part came as second nature to him.

“Curse her!” he muttered after the fashion of the stage villain. “Curse her! but she has spoke her doom. I’ll take care that her words come true.”

He gave another laugh, and a savage oath tripped up its heels, so to speak. Then he walked on, and . James Hughes came out of the doorway where he had been hiding, and restored to its sheath the long knife that he held bare in his right hand.

He looked after the other man, thinking—

“What doth he mean? What doth he mean?”

All the rest of the night that question remained in his mind:

“What doth he mean? What doth he mean?”

It was not until the tragedy of “Othello,” which was produced the next afternoon, was approaching its close, that the answer to that question seemed to come to him. He was at the back of the stage, and from this standpoint he had watched the effect of his wife's representation of Desdemona upon the people in the playhouse. He heard the tumult of applause that greeted the first appearance of a woman in the character of the gentle lady, and he saw that Burt was surpassing all his previous efforts in the part of the Moor. Then suddenly the answer to his question flashed upon him.

He had moved to one side to allow the scene-shifters to put the rude bed for the last scene in its place. The sight of the bed and its pillows suggested the answer. He staggered against the wall, whispering—

“My God—my God!”

In a moment he had regained his self-possession, and had slipped across the stage and hidden himself behind the flowing curtains of Desdemona’s bed. The scene-shifters had gone to another part of the stage, and by accommodating himself to the heavy folds of the drapery, he knew that he would be as invisible to anyone on the stage as he would be to the audience in the theatre.

A moment after he had concealed himself, his wife came down the stage and took her place on the bed. Then the curtain was raised, and after a breathless moment for the high-strung playgoers, the low voice of Othello we the sublime passage—

“It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul;   Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!   It is the cause. Yet I’ l l not shed her blood;   Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,   And smooth as monumental alabaster.   Yet she must die.   Put out the light, and then—put out the light.

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,   I can again thy former light restore   Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,   Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,   I know not where is that Promethean heat   That can thy light relume. When I have pluck’d the rose   I cannot give it vital growth again,   It needs must wither.”

What words they were! thought the man who was in hiding. What sublime words!

And then he drew his knife from its sheath as Othello bent for a moment over Desdemona.

“Would he kiss her?”

If Burt had kissed her, her husband would have put his knife back into its sheath, feeling that the wrong answer to his previous question had been suggested to him.

He saw that Burt avoided kissing her; and then her husband tested with his forefinger the point of the knife.

He heard nothing of the words that followed— the brief dialogue that followed the awaking of Desdemona—it seemed long to him. He waited until the frenzied Othello had raised the pillow in both hands and brought it down — it was no simulated expression of murder that was in his eyes —the actress saw it and shrieked out "Murder!” sending a thrill through the house, and then the pillow fell full upon her face, stifling her second cry.

“No, there will be no murder,” whispered her husband, swaying the curtain, so that when Burt raised his eyes—a look of startled fear had taken the place of the murderous glance—they saw that long knife raised over him ready to pierce his throat With a cry of dread his hands loosed upon the pillow with which he was crushing the life out of the woman on the bed, not in pretence, but in deadly earnest. He fell upon his knees, trembling with fear, and then came the loud knocking of Amelia.

“You have saved yourself, you hound!” said Hughes in his ear. “If you had kept it on her face for another instant you would have been a dead man.”

“My love—my husband—it was you who saved me!” sobbed Caroline in the arms of her husband a quarter of an hour later, when the playgoers had shouted themselves hoarse at the close of the drama. “He forced himself upon me—he swore to murder me when I repulsed him.”

“I heard him then, but only half an hour ago I knew what he meant,” said her husband. “Ah, my dear wife, do you fancy I doubted you for a moment? Nay, dear one, I only wished you to realise to the full what ’twas to be the wife of a jealous man.”

“I did realise it,” she said slowly, after a long pause.

They supped that night with Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, and returned home shortly after nine. Then James Hughes went to a neighbour of his who was a baiter of horses, and borrowed from him a well-knotted postillion’s whip. He went to Burt’s lodgings. Lights were in the windows. He knocked at the door, and pushed past the woman who admitted him.

“Mr. Burt—I must see him,” he said. “Which room is he in?”

The woman pointed to a door. He opened it The room was full of people. They stood round a table on which a dead body was laid. A man moved aside and disclosed to him the face of a corpse—the face of Richard Burt.

“Lord have mercy upon us!” said Hughes. “How did this happen?”

“Run through the vitals on his way from the playhouse,” whispered a watchman.

He had not reached his own door before he was met by Crisp.

“She died at five o’clock, and he died before St. Giles’ clock had chimed six,” said he.

Hughes kept his eyes fixed upon him and nodded twice.

“Ah, you think that I am a murderer,” cried the man.

“No—no,” said Hughes, solemnly. “He was the murderer—you are the sword of a just God.”

CHAPTER VII.

THE COMEDY OF THE KING’S ELMS.

I.

“Your matrimony you will find to be a poor thing without your patrimony, son,” said Sir Humphrey Close, “so if you marry your flame—flame, did I say?—oh, lud! the idea of talking of a Puritan flame!—’twould affront her mightily, I dare swear, to call her so to her face.”

“Nay, sir, things have changed somewhat since you were at St. James’s—Mrs. Charity is not so straight-laced as you seem to fancy,” said his son Everard, speaking rather warmly in his anxiety to redeem his sweetheart from the charge of being straight-laced.

“Mrs. Charity—Mrs. Charity,” sneered Sir Humphrey. “Gad’s mercy! that would be a name to introduce into the family of Close of King’s Elms!”

“You are unjust, sir,” said Everard. “Doth any man marry a woman for the sake of her name?”

“Hundreds of men do so,” shouted the old baronet, and then he went off into a paroxysm of laughter—such laughter as displaced the dust on the antlers above the fireplace and made the trophy of battle-axes knock together. “Gad’s mercy! if you wouldn’t marry a girl for the sake of her name, what would you marry her for? But I’ve said my speech, and if thou wert to prattle till Doomsday and the day after, thou couldst not change me. I tell thee what it is, son Everard, there’s no power that is of earth that can alter my purpose; and so go to—go to — I’ve well-nigh worked myself into a passion hearkening to thy tale o’ love. Tale o’ love!—tale o’ folly, sir—tale o’ damn folly, sir! The two are the same—love and folly.”

“I would fain hope that there is a difference, sir,” said the son.

“Facts are beyond the power of being altered by the hopes of a coxcomb,” shouted the father. “Dammy, sir, who are you that would set up your experience against mine? I didn’t always live in the country. And the town was a town in the good old days of his Majesty King Charles the First By my troth, sir, a man of fashion gained as much experience in a single night in those times as he could gain in a month in these tame days.”

“I dare not doubt it, sir: I have seen Lawyer Atkins’s list of mortgages on the estates.”

The father’s face became grave—up to that moment it had worn varying expressions, but never the expression of gravity. His fingers twitched convulsively, his head shook.

“That’s it, Evy, my lad,” he said in a low tone. “That’s it I bought my experiences pretty dear, but I won’t grumble if I can make them serve for you as well. The cost, spread over two lives, will not seem so high. I am willing to let one set of early experiences serve for both of us.”

“That’s very good of you, sir; and though most young men have no great leaning toward secondhand experiences, preferring a brand new set for themselves, yet I’m willing to forego the pleasure of acquiring them—I’ve proved my sincerity in this respect by asking your leave to marry Mrs. Charity Long.”

“Don’t provoke me, Everard—don’t provoke me. Don’t make me forget myself.”

“’Twould be no great harm if you were to forget yourself for awhile and remember me, sir.”

There was a tone of impudence and an air of disdain about Everard Close’s delivery of the words, so that he had no reason to feel surprised at his father’s springing from his seat with a good old Edgehill oath and an uplifted cane. He should not have been surprised if his father had brought the cane down on his shoulders. Sir Humphrey, however, contented himself with shaking his weapon and the ringlets of his wig in his son’s face. His mouth twitched, his eyes glared, his waistcoat heaved.

“Get out of this room, sir,” he said, in a voice that was hardly louder than a whisper. “If this was not the season of peace and goodwill, I would say, ‘Get out of this house.’ Marry your Puritan, if you will—marry your Charity, if you will; but don’t fancy that she’ll ever enter my doors. When I’m in my grave, you will doubtless bring her here, but till thenEndnote: ”

It was at this point that the door of the study was pushed open and a very pretty young woman entered the room, preceded by three dogs of a very uncertain breed and followed by two waddling spaniels. The girl was lilting “Here’s a health unto his Majesty,” and all the dogs were yelping in unison to show their loyalty. It took her several moments to make her voice heard above the din of the dogs’ greeting of the father and son; they had not seen either of the pair for quite half an hour.

“I humbly ask your pardon, Sir Humphrey,” said she, making a courtesy — a country-house courtesy, which differed essentially from a Court courtesy. “I did not know that there was anyone here. I only came hither for my guitar. Lud, sirs, how came you to be together in the study at this hour? Ah, I fear me that you came hither to quarrel. I cannot conceive of two healthy men coming into an atmosphere of books unless to quarrel.”

“Nay, child, 'tis no quarrel—fathers and sons do not quarrel at The King's Elms,” said Sir Humphrey, as the girl took his hand and swung herself into the hollow of his arm, so that his hand rested on her shoulder.

“Oh, do they not?” she cried. “’Tis only the fathers and daughters who have their differences at The King's Elms. If 'twere not so you would not have your Grey Wraith.”

The hand that was upon her shoulders fell down limp by Sir Humphrey’s side so suddenly that she was greatly startled. She took a step back, and looked at the man. She was amazed to see that his face—it usually was a fine healthy brick tint—had become white. He was staring at the falling snow through the window.

“Alas!” she cried, “I fear that I have said something that I had no business to say. Dear Sir Humphrey, prithee forgive me—forgive your Molly. I only meant that—that—oh, lud knows what I meant I meant nothing.”

She gave him her hand. He patted it quietly, then gave a sigh. After a silence lasting over a minute he laughed.

“You are the only sort of wraith that I want to see about The King’s Elms, my dear,” said he. “That pink taffeta of thine should fright away every evil thing. I look on thee, Molly, as the good angel of my old house, and every man that is a man and hath eyes in his head must think the same unless he be a fool.”

He kissed her on the forehead, cast a meaning glance at his son, and then hurried to the door. When he had reached it, he turned round and looked first at her, then at his son. With another sigh he went away. His shoes sounded on the oak floor of the corridor.

“Lud, Evey, I fear me that my mention of the Grey Wraith disturbed your father,” said the girl.

“He hates to hear that thing so much as named,” said he. “You know that the Grey Wraith ever brings misfortune to our house.”

“Nay, I can’t think of grown men believing such stuff,” she cried. “For mine own part I think that a ghost gives distinction to an old house. I wish that we had one in attendance upon us at home. But alas! one cannot look for such a thing in a house that hath only been built these fifty years.”

“’Tis said that the Grey Wraith ever appears when there is a quarrel in our family, and stays about the corridors until the quarrel is healed,” said Everard.

"Ah, that was why Sir Humphrey turned pale when I mentioned the name of the Wraith: you and he had been quarrelling—I knew it People don’t come into a place where there are books unless to quarrel. Well, you’ll have to make friends quickly, or else you’ll come bump against the Grey Wraith some night in the corridor, and where will you be then, my fine fellow? Now, what have you been quarrelling about, sir?”

"What is the only point on which a father and son quarrel, Molly?”

"What, have you broken the knees of his new-bought hunter?”

"Nay, not so bad as that. Nay; he only wants me to marry you, my Molly.”

"And you refuse?”

He gave a start She had spoken in a low, insinuating voice, letting the end of the dogwhip-lash play about the edges of the dainty little foot that she showed from below her pink taffeta skirt, as though the lash were a fishing-line and her foot a plump fish.

He stared at her and glanced toward the door.

“You are a coward: you would e’en try to escape,” she cried. "Come, sir, answer me.”

"I know that I am all unworthy of you, Molly,” he said.

“Nay, tell not that to me, when I know that all the time you mean to offer yourself—if you haven’t done so already—to a young woman whom you hold far higher than you do me.”

“Ah, could you but know her, Molly, you would—”

“Not I, sir. I’ll swear that I would do nothing like that Ah, think, Everard, what a good thing it would be for you to marry me. Verney Chase is a noble property, and it will all be mine one day. You could then easily pay off all the mortgages on The King’s Elms.”

“I would not do aught so mean, child. I hold that the man who would marry a sweet girl—a lovely girl—such as you are, Molly—a girl whom he hath known since she was a child——”

“Would do a very good stroke of business.”

“That’s just it—business. But love hath no business with business, so——”

“So you refuse to marry me? Very well; watch for the Grey Wraith.”

She was actually pouting. He stared at her again.

“Why, Molly, dear Molly, I thought that you— that Lord Tony—”

She turned upon him and burst into a loud laugh, pointing her whip at him very archly.

"You’ve been making a fool of me, you rascal,” he cried. "You’ve been——”

She saw his purpose on his face, and made a rush for the door, and in a second there was a pandemonium of dog yelps, and the whole crew rushed for the door, pushing one another against the wainscot, and getting between Everard’s feet as he too made for the door. There was a howl and a yelp as he tripped over the spaniels and went sprawling into the girl’s arms. Fortunately he retained sufficient self-possession to enable him to carry out his original intention. He kissed her upon each cheek and then upon her chin—he meant it for her mouth.

“Deuce take those dogs!” he exclaimed.

And they had been sitting so patiently on their haunches round him and Molly during that long talk of theirs.

"You must never kiss me again,” she said.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“There are reasons.”

“Charity?”

“Psha! If I wanted you to kiss me I wouldn’t let her stand in the way.”

“Lord Tony, then?”

“You might have to fight him. I would not have you run through the vitals, Evey.”

“Nay, nor your Lord Tony either. You were thinking of him, not of me. I know you girls.”

They went down the highly mortgaged corridor hand in hand.

When Sir Humphrey saw them thus, he felt exultant When her ladyship saw them thus, she sighed. She knew that they were too friendly to be lovers.

When Lord Tony Ashhurst saw them thus, he laughed quite pleasantly.

And hearing him laugh, Colonel Vemey, Molly’s father, laughed still more heartily; for he now felt sure that his apprehensions on the subject of his daughter and Lord Tony were groundless.

Then the remaining guests in the great oak hall of The King’s Elms looked at one another and then out of the windows at the falling snow.

II.

They were all good county people who were spending Christmas at The King’s Elms. Sir Humphrey Close had once owned about forty thousand acres in Brackenshire, including the village of King’s Elms. He had, however, taken the cause of his late Majesty King Charles I. so much to heart, that he had not only fought on the Royalist side against the Parliamentary forces, he had also mortgaged his acres and melted down his silver to help forward the King’s cause.

Later on he had to pay a heavy fine to the Lord Protector, to be permitted to live on at the home of his ancestors. He had been forced to sell his town mansion—“the third good house in St James’s Square going to Paille Maille”—and to live in retirement during the Interregnum.

The Restoration of the legitimate line would mean to him, he was sure, a restoration of fortune; but he soon found out that the new King had been but imperfectly instructed on the subject of the personnel of the people who suffered for the good cause. His Majesty seemed to think that the bestowal of a commission in the Guards upon young Everard Close settled all his obligations to the family.

Sir Humphrey swore a few round Cavalier oaths —they had lost nothing of their rotundity during the Commonwealth—and endeavoured to console himself by the aid of a very excellent cellar, and an occasional game of cards with his sympathising neighbours, for what seemed to him the ingratitude of his sovereign.

After the lapse of some years, however, he began to doubt if the elements of real consolation were to be found in claret and cards. A succession of visits of two of his enemies—the family gout and the family lawyer—increased his doubt on this point; and at last his only consolation lay in the reflection that, however deeply the estate might be dipped, the marriage of his only son Everard with Molly, the only daughter of his neighbour Squire Vemey of Vemey Chase, would restore The King’s Elms to the position it had occupied in the days of Charles I.

The boy and girl had been attached when boy and girl, and the girl’s father had always been as keen for the match as the boy’s. He was devoted to his daughter, and thought with dread of the possibility of her marrying a man in a distant county, where he would only have a chance of seeing her once or twice a year. This was why he had done his best to discourage the suit of Lord Anthony Ashhurst, a relation of his own, by whom it seemed that his daughter had been attracted during a visit to the Bath.

It was thus only in keeping with the traditions of romance that when the young people grew up, they should turn out extremely good friends, but most indifferent lovers. And now Sir Humphrey had just had an interview with Everard in the study, and had been informed that one Charity Long, the daughter of a distinguished Puritan merchant in the City of London, had taken his heart by storm, so that it was impossible for him to love anyone else.

Well, he had kept his temper marvellously under control during this interview, Sir Humphrey reflected, and perhaps the result of his moderation was the appearance of Everard and Molly hand in hand in the great oak hall where The King’s Elms’ guests had assembled, the men to swear at the snow which had made the usual Christmas Eve hunt impossible, the ladies to work at their embroideries, and to practise Christmas glees to the sound of the jingling of a harpsichord. And then Mistress Molly Verney sang a pretty little tuneful song about Zephyr meeting Amanda straying, with a dainty “ Fa-la-la ” chorus; and afterwards, Captain Everard Close, by the aid of Molly, showed how the Saraband was danced at Whitehall.

In this joyous way Christmas Eve passed until it was time for the ladies to put on their gowns for dinner, for the hour was close upon three o’clock.

Scarcely had the company assembled in the pink salon when the butler called Sir Humphrey to the hall in a mysterious way, and a moment afterwards the sound of strange voices was heard by all in the salon. Then came the sound of a laugh—a loud but musical laugh. At the sound Everard gave a little start and frowned; but Molly burst into a rival laugh to that in the hall, and then Sir Humphrey appeared at the door leading in a pretty young woman wrapped up in the most splendid furs possible to imagine.

“’Twas a most happy notion of your postillion,

I vow, madam,” Sir Humphrey was saying as he entered.

“Indeed, sir, I am beginning to think so,” said the lady. “We were in most evil plight—lost in the snow, and the horses tired out Ah, indeed, to be brought suddenly before this distinguished company in so splendid an apartment is like being set down in heaven after being exposed to the rigours of t’other place.”

“My lady,” said Sir Humphrey to his wife, “we are fortunate enough to have it in our power to succour this lady. Her chaise was nigh lost in a snowdrift—the horses have taken five hours to cover the six miles from Inglethorpe—but fortunately the postillion caught a glimpse of the lights in our windows, and believing that they were in the village, he succeeded in making the tired horses crawl to the door.”

“Madam, we are indeed fortunate,” said Lady Close. “I shall have a room prepared for your ladyship without delay.”

“Your ladyship’s hospitality overwhelms me,” said the stranger with a real Court courtesy.

“Whom have we the honour of entertaining, madam?” asked Sir Humphrey while he led the lady to the fire.

“I am a very simple person,” was the reply. “I am Mrs. Lewknor Lane, of London.”

“Not one of the Norfolkshire Lanes?” he said.

“Nay, sir, only a cadet branch of the Devonshire Lanes. I was on my way to visit the dear Bishop at Griffenbury—his lordship is a near relation—i’faith, I fear I must look on him as a distant relation to-night.”

“Mrs. Lane, madam, I promise you that you will not look upon his lordship, near or distant, for ten days at the least,” said Sir Humphrey. “This is my son, madam, at your service,” he added, as Everard approached and bowed.

“Why, may I die if this be not Captain Everard Close of his Majesty’s Guards,” cried the lady. “Lud, sir, have we not met under the same roof before now?”

“If you say so, madam, of course——”

“Gad o’mercy, sir, this is a town greeting of a lady and we are in the country, praise the Lord for’t,” cried Sir Humphrey, as his son bowed, speaking in a cold and formal tone.

“Nay, Sir Humphrey,” said the lady, her eyes dwelling significantly upon those of the young man. “Nay, sir, I am sure that if your son gives so trifling a matter the thought of a moment he will save me the trouble of reminding him of the incidents that led up to our first meeting.”

“Dear madam,” said Everard quickly—almost apprehensively—“I now recollect clearly where it was we met—ay, and how! How could I have been stupid enough to forget? Twas only for a moment that my memory refused to guide me. Mrs. —Mrs.—ah—”

"Mrs. Lewknor Lane, of London,” said Molly, prompting him.

"Of course; Mrs. Lane, yes, I am happy to welcome you to our home, and our friends,” stammered Everard.

"You are a worthy son of your father, Captain Close,” said the lady.

"And now you can tell us all about how you met, and where,” said Molly quietly.

Everard looked—for a moment—apprehensively in the direction of the stranger.

The stranger laughed.

"Nay, there is no need to say anything more except that it was not at the palace of the Bishop of Griffenbury—”

"Your near relation.”

"My near relation—not perhaps so near as that gentleman”—she nodded towards Lord Tony—“is to you, my dear, but still, near.”

In a second Molly’s face became rosy, her lips parted, as if she were about to speak, but no words came. Lord Tony examined his finger-nails.

At this moment her ladyship returned to the room to inform the stranger that her room was now ready to receive her, and she left the salon, escorted to the door by Everard.

“A most charming creature!” said Sir Humphrey. “But what is this mystery of your meeting her?” he added, turning to his son, who came slowly back to the room.

“Psha!” said Everard, ” there is no mystery in the matter. It was, if my memory serves me, Jack Churchill—he who has just married the lovely Sarah Jennings—who presented me.”

“Such furs as she wears!” cried a lady. “She cannot but be a distinguished person to possess such furs.”

“Yes,” said Everard, after a short pause. “Yes, she is a distinguished person.”

“I could swear that I have seen her face before now, but I cannot remember where,” said Lord Tony.

There was some more general conversation about the stranger before she reappeared and went in to dinner on the arm of Sir Humphrey.

It was quite clear, from her dress, that Mrs. Lewknor Lane’s trunks had not got adrift in the snow. She wore a splendid brocade trimmed with lace and glistening with jewels. Round her shapely neck was a circle of diamonds of startling size and lustre, and her fingers blazed with rubies. The Bishop of Griffenbury would certainly be able to tell Sir Humphrey what was the exact text from the Apocalypse which the appearance of this lady, glistening in her jewels, suggested. Sir Humphrey had but a vague thought of the verse introducing the diamond and the pearl and the beryl and the chrysoprase and the sapphire.

“Madam,” said he, as they seated themselves at the table—it was made of far too solid oak to groan beneath the weight of the dishes—“Madam, the knights of the road are mighty dull rascals, or they would not have permitted us the pleasure which we now enjoy in envying you your jewels. Tis years since I saw such gems.”

“Ah, I had ever a fondness for gew-gaws, Sir Humphrey,” said she. “Tis an innocent taste, I would fain hope.”

“My lord bishop might find it his duty to rail against jewels in the abstract, but Pll swear that he would not have the heart to say a word about yours, Mrs. Lane, since they serve but to enhance the most exquisite of nature’s own handiwork,” said Sir Humphrey.

“Ah, Sir Humphrey,” cried the lady. “I find it easy to believe now what I have heard frequently before to-day, that Sir Humphrey Close was the most dangerous of the cavaliers who rode with Prince Rupert”

The old baronet shook his head in deprecatory delight, and swore that he was an old man; but he admitted with great frankness, when challenged by the lady, that he had once been young—“young as the best of them,” was his phrase, though he really meant young as the worst of them. He drank to his beautiful partner with a grand air.

Many times during the progress of the dinner he exhibited this grand air by the same act. Bottle after bottle found its way into his tall glass, until his face had become the colour of the great ruby which blazed on the lady’s armlet; and she noticed that when, later in the evening, he sat down to cards with Squire Verney and a few other choice spirits, he did so very shakily. She also noticed that he swore roundly at his luck in the course of the game, and once she heard him say—

“The Hurst Farm is gone at last, Sir Capel. Well, I’m glad it has fallen into such good hands, my lad—I’m glad—devilish glad, sir, that——”

But at this point she saw the poor old man put his hand up to his face, and allow the newly-dealt cards to lie untouched on the table before him, until reminded by young Sir Capel Trevor that it was his lead. Then he picked up the cards quickly, dashed them down on the table with an oath, and with a shaking hand emptied the remainder of the bottle that stood beside him into his glass, which he drained.

“You do not seem to be ashamed of yourself, madam, for playing such a trick upon simple country folk,” said Everard in a low voice, seating himself beside the lady with the jewels.

“Ashamed, sir?” she said.

“That was my word, madam,” said he. “If my poor father did but know that he was entertaining Nell Gwyn beneath his roof, he would—well, he would certainly—oh, are you not ashamed?”

“Yes,” said she; “I am indeed ashamed that Sir Humphrey Close hath not a son of sufficient spirit to turn these false friends neck and crop out of his house and so save a worthy gentleman from ruin. Good heaven, sir, what neighbours have you who can urge on an old man who has drunk too much wine, to gamble away his estate? People talk glibly of the vices of the town, but by the Lord Harry, Captain Close, we are saints compared to your simple country folk.”

“Madam,” said he, with a touch of hauteur, “the Closes of The King's Elms can take care of themselves without the intervention of Nell Gwyn.”

“You lie,” said Nell Gwyn simply—there was no hauteur about her. “Look at that poor old man weeping furtively in his handkerchief for having lost Hurst Farm to Sir Capel Trevor, and then tell me if you can, that the Closes of The King’s Elms”— she mimicked his hauteur to perfection—“can look after themselves.”

“Hurst Farm—are you sure? Good Lord! Hurst Farm!”

“Ask him if my ears make a fool of me. Ah, my dear Captain Close, you forbade me to make any endeavour to serve you in return for the great service you did to me when my chair was attacked by the mob, but if you saved my life then I will save your house from ruin now.”

“How will you do it? There is no one in this place to whom my father would listen.”

Captain Close was looking away from her. He was staring moodily across the room to the group round the card-table.

“He will listen to me, I’ll warrant you,” said she. “I don’t quite know why or how, but I’ll swear that he’ll listen to me. Don’t you know that there’s no man living who will refuse to listen when Nell Gwyn speaks? La, sir; what would be the good of being Nell Gwyn if ’twere not so. Ay, and I’ll promise you that he’ll give you leave to marry your fair Puritan with her hundred thousand pounds and that Indian island with its sugar-canes, its tobacco and its slaves. Now go across the room to that table and kick it over. Hurst Farm!”

“By the Lord, ’tis I who listen to you now, for I am but a man,” said he.

“A man? Are you indeed?” she cried. “Then go and kick over that table.”

“Nay,” he said, hesitating. “Nay, that would be—By the Lord, I’ll do it—I’ll do it!”

After only a moments’s faltering, he sprang to his feet just as Sir Capel Trevor was about to deal the cards, walked to the card-table and said quietly— “Don’t you think, Sir Capel, that we have had enough cards for to-night? What, sir, is not Hurst Farm sufficient for you for one night?”

Sir Humphrey tried to get upon his feet—he rapped out the oath preliminary to making the attempt to rise, but then fell back in his chair whimpering, “Hurst Farm—Hurst Farm!”

“Everard is quite right, Sir Capel,” said Squire Vemey, rising. “We have had enough for one night”

“I make bold to think so too, Sir Capel,” said Nell, coming forward. “I have been greatly interested in the game. Of course among gentlemen of honour such as you are, the play for Hurst Farm can only be looked on as a jest. I am but a woman, to be sure, yet I know that were any gentleman to play seriously for such a stake with his host after his host has dined——”

“Madam,” said Everard with dignity, “if Sir Humphrey Close named his stake and lost, there is no power that will prevent him from paying.”

Sir Humphrey was on his feet in an instant.

“By the Lord Harry, the boy has spoken the truth!” he cried. “Pll pay my losses if they amount to a score of Hurst Farms.”

He brought his fist down upon the table with a crash that caused one of the ladies to scream out.

“Then there is nothing more to be said,” laughed Nell.

But as she walked away from the table she found herself by the side of Sir Capel Trevor, to whom she said in a low tone—

“I have it on my mind to say to you, Sir Capel, that if you take the title-deeds of the property for which you played with a drunken man, you will find England too hot to hold you.”

“What do you mean, madam?” he cried angrily. “I mean that before another week has passed you will be the best known person in London. There is not a coffee-house that will not be crowded with people talking of you, and as many lampoons will be writ about you as will make a volume.”

“I will not be threatened, madam,” said Sir Capel. “It will be for Lord Anthony and myself to determine whether or not I accept the property which was voluntarily staked by Sir Humphrey Close.”

Nell laughed.

III.

The next morning, while the Christmas chimes were ringing across the white landscape, Nell came upon Molly in the act of leaving her room, and kissed her hand to her.

The girl held up her head, and there was a curl on her lip, seeing which Nell laughed and kissed the tips of her fingers to her again.

Then Molly went close to her, saying—

“Woman, how durst you come hither? I know you, Nell Gwyn.”

“Doth that mean that you will tell the good folk in the hall what you know?” asked Nell.

“I will tell them,” said Molly.

“Good; and shall I tell them what I saw in this very corridor at dawn when I was leaving my room to search for a gem which I fancied I had dropped in the hall?” said Nell in a whisper.

The girl flushed like a winter sunset.

“You have married your Lord Tony, no doubt; but ’twas a secret marriage; and yet you have the impudence to accuse me of coming hither under false pretences when you know that that is your position. Fie, for shame, my lady! Now listen why I came hither. Captain Close saved my life a fortnight ago, by rescuing my chair from a horrid mob. I promised him that I would not forget that service. I am here to help him and his family from ruin. I have in one of my trunks a patent of nobility conferred by his Majesty upon Sir Humphrey Close, Baronet, in recognition of his services to the late King, of blessed memory. He is now Baron Close, of The King’s Elms, in the county of Bracken-shire.”

“Good heavens!” cried the girl.

“Now, I mean to obtain from my Lord Close a solemn renunciation of wine and cards; and also his lordship’s permission for his son to wed Mistress Charity Long and her hundred thousand pounds, her island in the Indies and its slaves. Now are you satisfied that I am not here under false pretences?”

Molly threw her arms round her neck and kissed her.

Then while the others of the party were slowly assembling for breakfast, the girl took Nell through some of the great rooms of the house, including the picture-gallery. Holbein’s lovely painting of the luckless Dorothy Close who had drowned herself in one of the fish-ponds on the eve of her marriage with a man whom she detested, interested Nell amazingly.

“She is now said to appear to the head of the house before a death or some other disaster,” said Molly.

"You are assuming that death is invariably a disaster, which is going a little too far,” said Nell.

"She is known by the name of the Grey Wraith,” continued the girl, glancing suddenly behind her.

“What! doth the Grey Wraith appear when you talk about her?” asked the other, with a laugh.

“Nay, I was apprehensive lest Sir Humphrey might have overheard; he is terribly afraid of the Grey Wraith,” said Molly.

" ’Tis lucky that he is afraid of something. Lud, there are scores of families that would pay a big price for so charming a family spectre. If Sir Humphrey—my Lord, I mean—continues in his present course, the ghost will soon be the most valuable of the assets of The King's Elms.” It was not until she Was leaving the gallery, crying out against the cold, that she stopped suddenly. She clapped her hands together, saying, “By the Lord Harry, I have it—I have it!”

“What is it that you have, madam?” asked Molly.

“I have the bogey,” replied Nell. “These men have all of them a secret bogey—just like children. When you find the special bogey that a child dreads you can do anything with the child. When you find a man’s particular bogey you can do anything with him. He shall have his Grey Wraith.”

All that lovely Christmas Day Sir Humphrey was babbling gaily of the revenge he meant to have upon those whom luck had favoured the previous night, and so, to fit himself for the game, he drank steadily through the forenoon and more deeply at dinner than ever. But the result of steady drinking is not steady nerves, and when he sat down to play he was in a very sad condition. He played so recklessly that even his friends, who had had an interview with Nell Gwyn, could not make him win. He staked farm after farm and lost them ail, and he would assuredly have been ruined before night but for the forethought of Nell, in obtaining a promise from the other players that they would treat their host as they would a child.

And all the time that this melancholy comedy was being played in one comer of the oak hall, the girls of the party were in the minstrels' gallery singing their Christmas carols.

Sir Humphrey had to be carried to bed in a conveniently situated room on the ground-floor, and Nell, watching the operation, felt sure that he more frequently slept there than in his own room at the end of the great corridor;

The lights were extinguished in the hall, and all the household was supposed to be abed, when Nell, who had been dozing by the fire in her room, put on over her dress a long garment of grey quilted satin, and loosed her hair, letting it fall down her back. Then she took off her shoes and opened her door quite noiselessly, listening for any sound that might tell her that someone besides herself was awake.

She only heard the hooting of the owls among the ancient, ivy-wrapped oaks outside.

She crept along the corridor and reached the head of the oak staircase; but before she had descended a single step, she heard a curious murmuring in the hall below. She stole down to the first landing and put her head between the carved banisters.

The sight that she saw where the sickly light of the moon streamed through the diamond panes of the barred window and mingled with the ruddy, flickering light of the logs in the grate, filled her with pity.

The old man was sitting on his chair in front of the red embers patting the head of the dog, whose nose rested on his knee, and whose tail was beating the floor. He was talking to the animal.

“Poor old Walnut!” he muttered. “Thou and I have been good friends for half a score of years*

God knows if I have ever had a friend save thee; and now we are about to part. Thy fool of a master is ruined, friend Walnut, and he fears to face his ruin. When the morning dawns, old dog, and there is a hubbub in the old house, and the news comes that thy master hath been found frozen stiff in the snow, I dare swear that thou wilt whine. Nay, don’t whine for me, dog; go about the old house as though nothing had happened, and don’t growl when you hear the strangers say in bated tones, * Tis a good riddance.’ Ay, ’tis a good riddance, old Walnut—a good——”

Then the old dog began to whine, and Nell knew that it was whining because its master was weeping. Nell herself was weeping.

Then the dog’s whine was changed to a growl as she took a downward step. She stopped. When she had set out to play the ghost the possibility of facing the dog had not entered into her calculations. After a moment’s hesitation she descended a few more steps. With another growl the animal left its master’s knee and ran to the foot of the staircase. But the instant it caught sight of her, its tail fell and its body went down to the floor. It gave a howl of fear, and crawled abject behind its master’s chair.

Then its master turned his head and saw her Standing in the cold moonlight at the foot of the stairs.

"Gad o’ mercy!” he cried in a terror-stricken whisper. "Tis the Grey Wraith! Ah, but the presage is wrong: ’tis no disaster that is about to happen—no disaster—a blessing—a blessing.”

He had his eyes fixed on her as he sat in the great carved chair, a hand grasping each of its arms.

Once again the dog howled piteously. The owls outside hooted through the moonlight "You are right,” whispered Nell without stirring. "No disaster is coming upon our house, my Lord.”

"‘My Lord’ she calls me—why—why?” muttered the old man.”

"Because you are the Lord Close of King’s. Elms. His Majesty hath signed the patent—’tis already beneath our roof. You will find it at the foot of my picture in the gallery.”

"Gad o’ mercy! Then my boy — my son Evey--”

"He is your heir. You have wronged him deeply.”

"True—true; but now I will right him, for——”

"There are ways by which you can right him. You will make him free to take to wife the virtuous lady who loves him and whom he loves,”

"Molly—Molly Vemey.”

“She does not exist. Bring her into your study face to face with your son and ask her if she hath not been a wife for the past fortnight.”

“Gad o’ mercy! Oh, the sly puss!”

“You will give me your word to welcome as your daughter Charity Long?”

“My son shall not wed a Puritan. He will be Lord Close of King’s Elms.”

“Never. I swear to you on the word of a Close of The King’s Elms, that if you give not me your promise you will not find your patent of nobility at the foot of my picture. Will you deprive your son of his title as well as of his title-deeds, my Lord?”

“Nay, nay, I am not so base. But—oh, I have hated Puritans all my life.”

“Then you must waste no more time before beginning to love them. After all, you need only love one of them, and she will not be a bitter pill.”

“If Evey loves her so will I.”

“I take your word for it. She will have a hundred thousand pounds as well as an isle of sugar-canes. Now I must have your promise never to play cards for a higher stake than a crown, and even then to cease your play when you lose more than a guinea.”

“I shall never touch a card again—never— by—”

“Nay, I ask for no impossibilities. And then the wine—you must give me your word never to drink more than one bottle at dinner and one at supper.”

“I shall never touch a bottle again—never— by—”

“Nay, I ask for no impossibilities. I have your promise on these three matters—the promise of a Close of The Kang’s Elms. I know what the word of a Close of The King’s Elms means. I died rather than break the promise I gave to my true love. Ah, my Lord, you would not have your son break his promise to the lady whom he loves. Now, kinsman, farewell—farewell”

The Grey Wraith glided away and Sir Humphrey Close fell on his knees by the chair.

The next morning Nell, on descending from her room, found her host standing at the head of the table in the hall, holding a parchment in his hand bearing a seal as big as one of the pewter plates. His guests were calling him “my Lord,” and congratulating him. When Mrs. Lewknor Lane heard that the King had conferred a barony upon his trusty and well-beloved Sir Humphrey Close of The King’s Elms, in the county of Brackenshire, Baronet^ she also congratulated him.

As soon as Everard and Molly appeared, his Lordship had them both into his study, but they only remained there for a few minutes. When they reappeared, his Lordship and Molly were smiling through their tears. Everard was smiling without any tears. He went straight to where Nell Gwyn was standing, and stooping down, kissed her hand.

Molly followed his example.

And now it was Mrs. Lewknor Lane who was smiling through her tears.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE COMEDY OF THE OLD LOVE.

"Madam Ellen’s levée is at this hour, is’t not?” said the Duke of Buckingham to one of the many lackeys who formed a bowing line, suggesting a row of scarlet poppies yielding to a persistent wind, as he entered the splendid anteroom to the great salon, decorated—rather too profusely—in the latest French style, in Madam Eleanor Gwyn’s house in Pall Mall.

“Madam Ellen is at the point of descending, your Grace,” replied the major-domo.

“I am the earliest of her visitors,” said the Duke. “Will there be a large attendance today?”

“Madam does not limit the attendance at her levées, your Grace. ’Tis at the card-tables in the evening that only a few are admitted,” said the major-domo.

"H’m, I shall wait,” remarked his Grace.

The major-domo bowed; not without a due sense of his own importance, as well as of the importance of the visitor.

The Duke strolled about the rooms with smiles that varied as his eye caught the various objects of decoration scattered with ludicrous profusion about the salon. Side by side with a masterpiece of French workmanship was a wretched thing of pasteboard and paint, presented to Nell Gwyn by one of the playhouse carpenters. A pair of bronze gilt candelabra worth a fortune, stood on pedestals of wood emblazoned with coloured paper. Nell Gwyn’s taste was eccentric—to be more exact, it might be said to be extremely inclusive. She could appreciate a great work of decorative art, but she failed to differentiate between it and a paltry conception not good enough to be used as a shop-sign.

The Duke was hugely amused, nor was his impression changed when he glanced round, hearing the swish of the portieres, and saw at the point of entering the lower salon, two beautiful ladies—their charms were so amply displayed as to place no tax upon the imagination of his Grace. No two ladies of the Court were more generous in this way than the Duchess of Cleveland—lately the Countess of Castlemaine—and the Duchess of. Portsmouth—lately the exquisite Madame de Queronelle, the gift of the French King to the English Court “We have not come soon enough," whispered the Duchess of Portsmouth to her Grace of Cleveland.

“Oil and vinegar,” murmured the Duke; "a piquant salad for Nelly.”

“Ah, Duke, you are early in offering your duty to Madam Ellen, are you not?” said the Duchess of Cleveland quite pleasantly—for her—as the Duke bowed lower than any lackey.

“If I am arraigned on such a charge, I shall claim the privilege of having your Grace beside me in the dock,” said he.

“I’ faith, we are early,” said the Duchess of Portsmouth; "but the Park in the morning is very sweet”

"So that your Grace was compelled to seek an antidote in Nell Gwyn’s house?” suggested the Duke.

"And we have found one,” cried the Duchess.

"Nay, madam, I said not that you needed an antidote to sweetness; were you not in the companionship of the Duchess of Cleveland?” said the Duke smiling.

"The Duke of Buckingham hath been round the coffee-houses already. That accounts for his wit,” said the Duchess of Cleveland.

"His Grace’s wit is of such a quality as proves beyond doubt that none of the Coffee-house wits are early-risers,” remarked the other lady.

"If they are not, madam, they cannot certainly excuse themselves on the ground that they sat up late at a party of the Duchess of Portsmouth’s,” said the Duke.

“Nay, my parties are not always dull: your Grace is sometimes absent,” said the Duchess of Portsmouth.

“That is how I come to be alive to-day. And I fly from your Grace’s presence now so that I may be alive to-morrow,” cried he, bowing as he passed out through the curtains.

“I’m afraid we must have him as an ally,” said the Duchess of Cleveland.

“Our case is sure not so desperate as that?” said the other.

“The King may listen to him.”

"Yes, ma chére, but will the Duke listen to us?”

“Not if you air your wit upon him. Wit is the art of making other people feel uncomfortable. Besides, my dear creature, I think you will find some difficulty in securing as an ally one whose enmity you have cultivated for several years.”

“Bah! I can do what I please with men.”

The other smiled. Her smile was very irritating —it had the elements of a shrug about it She only remarked, however, "What can be keeping our friend, Madam Ellen?”

“This orange-woman’s brat gives herself the airs of an Empress,” said the Duchess of Portsmouth.

Then turning suddenly at the sound of the curtain rings, she cried, “Ah, dear Madam Ellen. What a picture of grace!”

“A picture of grace!” echoed the other.

And truer words were never spoken, if there was any truth in Sir Peter Lely’s portrait of Nell Gwyn, done at this period of her career.

“Ah, then we are the Three Graces that Mr. Dryden told me of—her Grace the Duchess of Portsmouth, her Grace the Duchess of Cleveland, and me—grace personified by the grace of—of your Graces,” cried Nell. Then glancing critically from one to the other of her visitors, she remarked, “I wonder how much of the grace of God there is among the three of us? Dr. Ken, the Canon of Winchester, would have no difficulty appraising it, I fancy.”

“The wretch that would not let you lodge in his house,” said the Duchess of Cleveland, with well-simulated indignation.

“Ay, that was Dr. Ken. But your Graces have not honoured me with this visit to talk about clergymen.”

“Nay, ’tis but a visit of friendship, madam; and converse on theology is no promoter of friendships,” said the Duchess of Cleveland.

“Though Madam Ellen’s heart is generous enough to make impossible even a quarrel with her on theology,” said the other.

"Oh, your Grace overwhelms me,” cried Nell, sinking in a courtesy.

"Ah, ’tis true indeed, but alas! generosity may sometimes lead one astray,” said the Duchess of Cleveland.

"Is it worth while discussing a point which cannot possibly affect your Grace?” asked Nell,

"Nay, ’tis but in connection with this freak of yours—this hospital for old soldiers, dear child. Are you not urging the King to an act of foolish generosity?” said her Grace.

"’Tis not generosity, madam; ’tis but simple justice,” cried Nell.

"Think of the money that it will cost—thousands —tens of thousands,” said the trench lady.

"Less than his Majesty would throw away in a year upon one of us,” replied Nell.

"One of us—one of—oh, yes; of course, but— well, we need it,” said her Grace of Cleveland.

“We are not so needy as the poor men who fought for the King and his house.”

“Ah, true—true; but I fear that the people will not submit to the enormous cost of maintaining your hospital,” said the Duchess of Cleveland.

"When they submitted to the King’s granting you the revenues of the post-office, they will submit to anything,” said Nell.

Her Grace of Cleveland took an angry step in the direction of Nell, but Nell stood her ground, and the Duchess refrained from saying the words which had sprung to her lips. She gave a laugh that rang very hollow, and some moments had passed before she said—

"Look you, Madam Ellen; if you agree to cease urging on the King to waste upon this hospital the money which he would certainly spend upon us, we promise you that within a year you shall be made a Duchess.”

"I will promise you this, madam: I will not cease to urge the King to build this hospital even though his courtiers and courtesans should be left beggars,” cried Nell. "And as for your bribe—we have enough Duchesses in this realm to last us for awhile. I am Nell Gwyn, daughter of the people, and I seek not to be known by any other name. You talk of what the people will stand. What do you know of them? By the Lord, the people may teach you a lesson some of these days that even you cannot fail to learn. Everyone knows that l am on the side of the English people against all the world. But you, Duchess of Cleveland—you Madame de Queronelle, are you on the side of the King of England or the King of France?”

“Bah! the King of France is stronger than the King of England,” cried the Frenchwoman.

“Yes; but the people of England are stronger than both. Beware of the people of England, Madame de Queronelle,” said Nell.

“They are canaille, and you—you are one of them, Nell Gwyn,” cried the Duchess of Portsmouth.

“Insolent baggage!” shrieked the other Duchess. “You shall die in the gutter from which you sprang, and your boy—ah, you think that the King will be fool enough to ennoble the brat I know better. He will die a——”

Nell sprang toward her, and she wisely retreated.

“If you say that word which is trembling on your lips, I will tear out the tongue that framed it,” said Nell in a whisper. “Take yourself out of my house, foul-mouthed creature!”

“We are properly repaid for putting ourselves on a level with an orange-girl,” cried the Frenchwoman.

“Nay, your Grace could never climb so high,” retorted Nell.

“The King shall learn of this,” cried the Duchess of Cleveland.

“Ah, the King shall learn it, be assured,” said her Grace of Portsmouth.

“Tell it to your King, the King of France,” cried Nell, as the two ladies dashed through the portiere.

Left alone in the salon, Madam Ellen paced the room excitedly for some time. Then she struck her hands together, crying, “As God is my witness, I will never cease to urge the King to build the hospital. Honours—what care I for honours?—for duchess-ships? The honours of dishonour. Nay, I ask only the honour of having it said of me that I helped on this work for England’s sol-diers.”

The anteroom had by this time become crowded with courtiers anxious to profit by doing her the honour of attending her levée.

Through the curtain came a still young officer. He bowed low, and she greeted him cordially.

“Ah, Colonel Churchill, you have not forgotten me in your foreign wars?”

“How would that be possible, madam?”

“I cannot conceive it for myself. No man who remembers himself so well as Colonel Churchill does Could forget Nell Gwyn. How can I be of help to you, Colonel?”

He went dose to her.

“Dear madam, General Crosby is very ill——”

“Ah, I thought that my old friend remembered himself. Well, better that than that he should forget himself. Sir, the King shall hear of your merits before the breath is out of poor Crosby’s body.”

“With what words—”

“Good-morning to you, Colonel—General Churchill.”

He retired, bowing low, having kissed her hand, and made way for a clergyman wearing an apron. “Mr. Archdeacon, I feel honoured,” said Nell. “Nay, madam,” said the Archdeacon, in these days when the scarlet—I mean when the influence of Rome—when the papacy is—ah—the thin end of the wedge, as it were—the value of so excellent a Protestant as Madam Ellen——”

“Pray, sir, who is on his death-bed now?” asked Nell abruptly.

“On his death-bed, madam?”

“Or perhaps he is already dead?”

“What, you have heard of it already? I thought that I only had the news. Alas, madam, ’tis but too true, his lordship expired early last evening.”

“His lordship the bishop?”

“Ah, madam, in the midst of life—but his lord-ship was an old man, as you know.”

“Well, considering that I haven’t the least idea who it is you speak about—but I guessed he was a bishop.”

“Madam, I speak of the Bishop of Bath and Wells.”

“Then by the Lord—the Lord Bishop I mean— Dr. Ken shall have his mitre.”

“You will never ask the King to advance the churl who refused you a lodging?”

“That’s the man for us—for the Church of England—but I fear, not for you, Mr. Archdeacon.”

“Then, madam, all that I can say is that ’tis no wonder that the Presbyterians are rampant—’tis no wonder that heresy—”

With a laugh she turned away from him to an elderly gentleman who had come forward.

“Ah, my Lord, I have not been honoured by a visit from your Lordship since—was it since you begged of me to ask the King to make you Warden of the Meres?” said she. "And what help can I be to your Lordship at this time?”

“Madam, ’tis not for myself; I would die, madam, rather than ask favours for myself,” he replied with firmness.

"But you have a son.”

"The finest young fellow that lives, though I am his father, madam.”

"That is not his fault, my Lord. Is it in the Royal Scots or the Life Guards you wish him placed?”

"The Life Guards, dear madam. We are a poor but proud family, madam. Merit only hath advanced us. My boy would scorn to ask for favours if he once got a start The Life Guards, dear madam—and, if possible, a captaincy. I may depend on your good word? A thousand thanks. We come of a proud stock, madam. We are poor but proud, madam—my son——”

“His name shall be put before his Majesty, my Lord.”

The fine old fellow bent low over her hand. Going to the door, he glared back scornfully at the crowd, and muttered in righteous indignation, “Pack of sycophants—pack of sycophants!”

She had not heard the petitions of more than half of them when a strange and incongruous figure appeared at the entrance — a middle-aged lady dressed in incomparable finery, but suggesting, among her silks and feathers, the jackdaw masquerading as a peacock. She was remonstrating with the major-domo with great fluency—the fluency of Lewknor Lane.

“Why shouldn’t I see my daughter at any hour I please, fellow?” she was asking.

Madam Ellen laughed, and dismissed her Court “’Tis my lady mother,” she cried. “What post can she come to ask for? Ladies and gentlemen, you may all depend on my good word on your behalf. Come now, mother, and tell me all that you have to tell. Heavens, madam, do not tell me that you wish to be made Mistress of the Robes—or Master of the Horse.”

“Not me—not me,” said Mrs. Gwyn, eyeing the disappearing Court until she was alone with her daughter.

“I breathe again,” said Nell. "But I scarce knew that you were journeying hither to-day. Tis an honour and a surprise as well; and i’faith, now that I come to think on*t, the surprise is a deal greater than the honour. If you say you haven't come hither for more money, my surprise will be unbounded.”

“Pm not come for money, though a trifle would be welcome,” said the mother when Nelly had shown her the way into one of the rooms opening off a corridor at one side of the hall—a large apartment also furnished with ludicrous incongruity. A lovely settee made by the greatest artist in France, and upholstered in bright tapestry, was flanked by a couple of hideous chairs. A pair of Sevres vases, which had for some years been in St James’s Palace, stood on a sideboard among some rubbish of porcelain that Nelly had picked up in the purlieus of Westminster.

The mother was about to seat herself heavily on the gilded settee, when Nelly gave a, little scream, startling the elder lady so that she too screamed—a little hoarsely—in sympathy.

“What’s the matter, girl—what’s the matter?” she cried, dropping into one of the chairs.

“Nothing is the matter so far, mother; but a mighty deal would have been the matter if you had seated yourself otherwhere than in that chair. ’Snails, madam, who are you that you should plump your person down on a seat that was made for a legitimate monarch?”

“I’m a legitimate wife; hear you that, you perky wench?” cried the mother, craning her neck forward after the most approved fashion of pending belligerents at Lewknor Lane, off Drury Lane.

“The greater reason why you should avoid that settee, dear mother; it has never been other than the chattel of a Prince,” laughed Nelly. “And now, prithee, why the honour of this visit while the month is not yet near its dose?”

“I have met with an old friend of yours this day, Ndl,” said the mother, “and he is coming hither— ’tis that hath brought me.”

“An old friend! I’faith, good mother, ’tis the young friends are more to my taste. The savour of Lewknor Lane doth not swell sweet, and it clings most foully to all our old friends.”

“Oh, ay, but you once wasn’t so dainty a madam.”

“’Twere vain to deny it, mother, since it can be urged against me that I became your daughter. No, no, good mother; friend me no old friends—I like them new—the newer the better—plenty of gilding —none of it rubbed off—gingerbread and courtiers —plenty of gilding and plenty of spice beneath. But the old life in Lewknor Lane—in the coal-yard —ah, ’twas like to sour oranges, mother: thick skin above and sourness under. ’Snails! it doth set my teeth on edge to think on’t”

“Oh, ay; but now and again we lighted upon a Levant orange in the midst of a basketful—a sweet one to suck, and one to leave a sweet taste behind it”

“The best were mightily improved by the addition of a lump of sugar. But what hath all this vegetable philosophy to do with your visit to me today? If you mean to stay Pll send out for a couple of stone of sugar without delay.”

“Philosophy, Madam Impudence! You accuse your own mother of philosophy, when everyone knoweth that your own language was——”

"Worthy of a lady of quality, mother. It seemeth that you are anxious to hear whether or not I retain anything of my old skill in that direction, and by my faith, dear mother, you shall learn more than will satisfy your curiosity if you beat about the bush much longer. Whom say you that you met to-day?”

“What should you say if I told you that his name was Dick Harraden?”

“What, Dick! Dick! Dick Harraden!” Nell had sprung to her feet, and had grasped her mother by the shoulder, eagerly peering into her face. After a moment of silence following her exclamation, she gave her mother a little push in the act of taking her hand off her shoulder, and threw herself back in her own chair again with a laugh—a laugh that surrounded a sigh as a bright nimbus surrounds the sad face of a saint in a picture.

“What should I say, do you ask me?” she cried. “Well, I should say that you were a liar, good mother.” Nell was never particular in her language. As an exponent of the reaction against the Puritanism of the previous generation she was admitted by very competent judges to have scarcely an equal.

“Pm no liar,” said the mother. “Twas Dick himself I met face to face.”

“It puzzles me to see wherein lies your hope of getting money from me by telling me such a tale,” said Nell.

“I want not your money—at least, not till the end of the month or thereabouts. I tell you I saw Dick within the hour.”

“’Twas his ghost You know that when he threw away his link he took to the sea and was drowned in a storm off the Grand Canary. What did the seafaring man tell us when I asked him if he had seen Dick?”

“A maudlin knave he was—a very maudlin knave to come with such a tale.”

“But he said he had sailed in the same ship as Dick, and that it had gone down with all aboard save only himself.”

“Oh, ay; and he wept plentifully when he saw how you wept—ay, the knave! For I saw Dick with these eyes within the hour.”

“Oh, mother—and you told him—no, you dursn’t tell him——”

“He had just this morning come to London from the Indies, and it was good luck—or ill-luck may be—that made him run against me. He plied me with question after question—all about Nell—his Nell, he called you, if you please.”

“His Nell—ah, mother! his Nell! Well, you told him—”

“I told him that you would never more need his aid to buy foot-gear. Lord! Nell, do you mind how he bought you the worsted stockings when you were nigh mad with the chilblains?”

“And you told him. . . For God’s sake say what you told him.”

“I didn’t mention the King’s name—no, I’m loyal to his Majesty, God save him! I only told him that you had given up selling oranges in the pit of Drury Lane, and had taken to the less reputable part of the house, to wit, the stage.”

“Poor Dick! he didn’t like to hear that Oh, if he had stayed at home and carried his link as before^ all would have been well.”

“What is the wench talking about? Well—all would have been well? And is not all well, you jade? ’Twere rank treason to say else. Isn’t this room, with its gilded looking-glasses and painted vases, pretty well for one who had been an orange-girl? The King is a gentleman—and a merry gentleman too. Well, indeed!”

“But Dick—what more did you say to him, mother?”

“I asked him after himself, to be sure. I’faith, the lad . hath prospered, Nell—not as you have prospered, to be sure——”

“Nay, not as I have prospered.”

“Of course not; but still somewhat He will tell you all himself.”

“What! you told him where I dwelt?”

“I meant it not, Nelly; but he had it from me before I was aware. But he knows nothing. I tell you he only came to London from Bristol port in the morning; he will have no time to hear of the King and the King’s fancies before he sees you.”

“He is coining hither, then? No, he must not come; oh, he shall not come. Mother, you have played me false.”

“? Oh, the wench is mad! False? What could I say, girl, when he pressed me?”

“You could have said that I was dead—that would have been the truth. The girl he knew is dead. He must not come to this house.”

“Then give your lackeys orders not to admit him and all will be well. But I thought that you would e’en see the lad, Nell, now that he has prospered. If he hadn’t prospered it would be different.”

“Only an orange-seller, and yet with the precepts of a lady of quality! I’ll not see him. Did he say he’d come soon?”

“Within the hour, he said.”

Instinctively Nell looked at her reflection in a mirror.

“I’ll not see him,” she repeated.

“That gown will do well enough for one just returned from the Indies,” said the mother.

“Oh, go away; go away,” cried her daughter. “You have done enough mischief for one morning. Why could not you have let things be? Why should you put this man on my track?”

“Tis a fool that the wench is for all her smartness,” said the mother. “She was picked, out of the gutter and set down among the noblest in the land, and all that held on to her gown were landed in pleasant places; and yet she talks like a kitchen-jade with no sense. If you will not see the lad, hussy, lock your door and close your shutters, alter giving orders to your lackeys to admit him not. If needful, the King can be petitioned to send a guard to line the Park with their pikes to keep out poor Dick, as though he was the devil and the Park the Garden of Eden.”

“Oh, go away; go away!”

“Oh, yes; I’ll go. And you’ll see him, too; no fear about that. A girl, however well provided for—and you’re well provided for—wouldn’t refuse to see an old sweetheart if he was the old serpent himself; nay, she’d see him on that account alone. And so good-day to you, good Mistress Eve.”

She made a mock courtesy, the irony of which was quite as broad as that of her speech, and marched out of the room, holding her narrow skirts sufficiently high to display a shocking pair of flat-footed boots beneath.

Her daughter watched her departure, and only when she had disappeared, burst into a laugh. In a moment she was grave once again. She remained seated without changing her attitude or expression for a long time. At last she sprang to her feet, saying out loud, as though someone were present to hear her—

“What a fool thou art, friend Nell, to become glum over a boy sweetheart—and a link-boy, of all boys. Were I to tell Mr. Dryden of my fancy, he would write one of his verses about it, making out that poor Dick was the little god Cupid in disguise, and that his link was the torch of love. But HI not see him. ’Twere best not He’ll hear all soon enough, and loathe me as at times I loathe myself. No, no; not so much as that—not so much as that: Dick had always a kind heart No, I’ll not see him.”

She went resolutely to the bell-pull, but, when there, stood irresolute with the ornamental ring of brass in her hand for some moments before pulling it She gave it a sudden jerk, and when it was responded to by a lackey, she said—

“Should a man call, asking to see me, within the next hour, he is to be told—with civility, mind you: he is a gentleman—that—that I am in this room, and that I will see him for five minutes—only five minutes, mind you, sirrah.”

“And the man—the gentleman—is to be admitted, madam?”

“Certainly—for five minutes.”

“Your ladyship will regulate the time?”

“Go away, you numbskull! How could I regulate the time? Pm no astronomer.”

“Madam, I meant but to inquire if you are to be interrupted at the end of five minutes.”

“I gave you no such instruction, sirrah. It is enough for you to carry out the instruction I gave you. Cany it out, and yourself into the bargain.” The man bowed and withdrew. He was familiar with the colloquial style of his mistress, and her moods.

When the man had gone, Nelly laughed again, but suddenly became graver even than she had yet been.

“What have I done?” she cried. “Oh, there never was so great a fool as me. No, no; Pll not see him. I have as kind a heart as Dick, and Pll prove it by not seeing him.”

And yet, when she had her hand on the lock of the door, she stood irresolute once again for some moments. Then she went out with a firm step, her intention being to countermand in the hall the instructions she had given to the servant in the parlour;, but in the hall she found herself face to face with her old friend Sir Charles Sedley. He had brought her a bunch of violets.

“The satyr offers flowers to Aurora,” said the courtier to the courtesan, bowing as gracefully as a touch of rheumatism permitted him.

“And Aurora was so fond of flowers that she accepted them even from the most satiric of satyrs,” said Nell, sinking into a courtesy.

“I plucked these flowers for the fairest flower that—”

“Ah! that is one of Mr. Dryden’s images in the reverse,” laughed Nell. “What was the name of t’other young thing? Proserpine, that’s it— who was plucking flowers and was herself plucked. ’Snails! that’s not the word; she wasn’t a fowl.”

“’Fore Gad, Nell, I never heard that story. It sounds scandalous, so tell it us,” said Sir Charles. "What was the name of the wench, did you say?”

“Her name was Nell Gwyn, and she was gathering oranges to sell in the pit of Drury Lane when, some say Satan and some say Sedley— the incongruity between the two accounts is too trifling to call for notice—captivated her and she had nothing more to do with oranges or orange-blossoms.”

“And her life was all the merrier, as I doubt not Madam Proserpine’s was when she left the vale of Enna for—well, the pit—not at Drury Lane.”

“That were a deeper depth still. You’ve heard the story then? Mr. Dryden says the moral of it is that the devil has got all the pretty wenches for himself.”

“Not so; he left a few for the King.”

“Nay, the two are partners in the game; but the King, like t’other monarch, is not so black as he’s painted.”

“Nor so absolutely white as to be tasteless as the white of an egg, Nell.”

“His Majesty is certainly not tasteless.”

“On the contrary, he is in love with you still, Nell.”

They were standing apart from the group of servants in the hall. Nell Gwyn had pretended that she was about to ascend the stairs, but loitered on the second step with her right elbow resting on the oak banister while she smelt at the violets with her head poised daintily as she looked with eyes full of mischief and mirth at the courtier standing on the mat, the feathers of his broad-leafed hat sweeping the ground as he swung it in making his bows.

Suddenly Nell straightened herself as she looked down the hall towards the door—she started and dropped her violets. All the mischief and mirth fled from her eyes as a man was admitted, with some measure of protestation, by the porter. He was a young man with a very brown face, and he carried no sword, only the hanger of a sailor; his dress was of the plainest—neither silk nor lace entered into its manufacture.

Before Sir Charles had time to turn to satisfy himself as to the identity of the man at whom Nell was gazing so eagerly, she had run down the hall and seized the new-comer by both hands, crying— "Dick—Dick—it is you yourself, Dick, and no ghost!”

“No ghost, I dare swear, Nell,” cried the man in a tone that made the candles in the chandelier quiver, and Sir Charles Sedley to be all but swept off his feet. “No ghost, but—oh, Lord, how you’ve grown, Nell! Why, when I burnt my last link seeing you home you was only so high.” He put his hand within a foot of the floor.

“And you too, Dick! Why! you’re a man now—you’ll grow no more, Dick,” cried Nell, still standing in front of him with his hands fast clasped in her own. Suddenly recollecting the servants who were around, she dropped his hands, saying: “Come along within, Dick, and tell me all your adventures since last we were together.” "Lord! Adventures! You don’t know what you’ve set yourself down for, Nell. If I was to tell you all I should be in your company for at least a week.” She led him past Sir Charles Sedley without so much as glancing at the courtier, and the newcomer had no eyes for anyone save Nell. A servant threw open the door of the room where she had been with her mother, and the two entered.

Sir Charles took snuff elaborately, after he had replaced his hat on his head.

“If his Majesty should arrive, let him know that I am in the long parlour,” he said to a servant as he walked toward a door on the left.

He paused for a space with his hand on the handle of the door, for there came from the room into which Nell Gwyn and Dick Harraden had gone, a loud peal of laughter—not a solo, but a duet He turned the handle.

So soon as he had disappeared there came a second ripple of laughter from the other room, and the lackeys lounging in the hall laughed too.

II

Within the room Nell was seated on the settee and Dick Harraden by her side. She had just reminded him of the gift of the worsted stockings which he had made to her when he was a link-boy and she an orange-girl in Drury Lane. They had both laughed when she had pushed out a little dainty shoe from beneath her gown, displaying at the same time a tolerably liberal amount of silk stocking, as she said—

“Ah, Dick, ’tis not in worsted my toes are clad now. I have outgrown your stockings.”

“Not you, Nell!” he cried. “By the Lord Harry! your feet have got smaller instead of larger during these years—I swear to you that is so.”

“Ah, the chilblains do make a difference, Dick,” said she; “and you never saw my feet unless they were covered with chilblains. Lord! how you cried when you saw my feet well covered for the first time.” “Not I—I didn’t cry. What was there to cry about, Nell?” he said.

She felt very much inclined to ask him the same question at that moment, for his face was averted from her, and he had uttered his words spasmodically.

“Poor Dick! you wept because you had eaten nothing for three days in order to save enough to buy my stockings,” she said.

“How know you that?” he cried, turning to her suddenly.

“I knew it not at the time,” she replied, “but I have thought over it since.”

“Think no more of it, Nell. Oh, Lord, to think that I should live to see Nell again! No —no. I’ll not believe it. That fine lady that I see in the big glass yonder cannot be Nell Gwyn.” “Oh, Dick, would anyone but Nell Gwyn remember about Nell Gwyn’s chilblains?”

“Hearsay—mere hearsay, my fine madam!”

“By what means shall I convince you that I’m the Nell you knew? Let me see—ah, I know. Dick, I’il swear for you; you know well that there was no one could match me in swearing. Let me but begin.” “Oh, Lord! not for the world. You always knew when to begin, Nell, but you ne’er knew when to stop. And how doth it come that you haven’t forgot the brimstone of the Lane, Nelly, though you have become so mighty fine a lady?” “’Snails, Dick, the best way to remember a language is to keep constantly talking it”

“But in silks and satins?”

“Oh, I soon found that I only needed to double the intensity of my language in the Lane in order to talk the mother-tongue of fashion.”

“If swearing make the fine lady you’ll be the leader of the town, Nell, I’ll warrant But don’t say that you doubled your language—that would be impossible.”

“Oh, would it indeed?”

“Not so? Then, for God’s sake, don’t give me a sample of what you reached in that way, for I’ve only lived among the pirates and buccaneers of the Indies since.”

“Then I’ll e’en spare thee, Dick; but take warning: don’t provoke me. You wouldn’t provoke a pirate whose guns you knew to be double-shotted. Don’t say that I’m not Nell Gwyn for all my silks and lace. Why, man, doth oatmeal porridge cease to be porridge because it’s served in a silver platter?

Did your salt pork turn to venison when you ate it off the gold plate that you stole from the chapels?” “Lord, Nell, I wasn’t a pirate.”

“What! Didn’t you say just now that you had been among pirates and buccaneers in the Indies?”

“I was among them, but not of them.”

“You mean to say that you were neither a pirate nor a buccaneer?”

“Neither.”

“Then all I can say is that I’m mightily ashamed of you, Dick. I counted on your being at least a pirate. Don’t say that you became a merchant; I never could abide dishonesty, Dick.”

“Well, no; I never became just a merchant, Nell —at least, not the sort of merchant that merchants would call a merchant.”

“Oh, then there’s some hope for you yet, Dick. We may be friends still.”

“Friends? Well, I should say so. What did I work for, do you think, through all these years? What did I lay up a store of guineas for—guineas and Spanish doubloons and pieces of eight for——”

“And you have made a fortune, Dick? Think of that! Ah, I fear that you must have been a regular merchant after all; only regular merchants make fortunes in these days.”

“Ay, but some irregular ones do pretty fairly for themselves,”

“And you were somewhat irregular, I dare swear?” “Well, I wasn’t regularly irregular, dear; only by fits and starts. Ah, what I said to myself was: I’ve put the stockings on Nell, but I’ve to get new shoes for her yet. That’s what gave me the strength of ten men—working for those new shoes, Nell.” “Poor Dick! and now when you come home you find that I am already provided for.”

Again she showed him the dainty tips of her shoes. “Those are fair-weather shoes, Nell,” he cried. “Ay, that they are, Dick,” she assented with a note of sadness in her voice.

“But what I would offer you would stand the stress of all weather—fair or foul, Nell.”

“I believe you, Dick, with all my heart. I know what you had to offer me; but it’s too late now—too late, Dick.”

“Too late? What do you mean, girl?”

The look that came into his face frightened her. She threw herself back on the settee and laughed loudly for a minute or two.

“That’s what I mean,” she cried, tilting up her toes until they were on a level with his knees. “What else could I mean than that I’m already sufficiently shod? Even Nell Gwyn can’t wear more than one pair of shoes at one time, Dick. It’s rather a pity, but it’s an ill that must be borne! Now tell us about yourself, Dick. Tell us how you fought with pirates and buccaneers—never mind telling how you made a fortune in pieces of eight: there’s no romance about making a fortune—tell us about the pirates, and above all, tell us what the Spanish Main is.”

“The Spanish Main—why it’s the Spanish Main to be sure—south of the Indies—a good place for trade, and a good place for pirates. But you, Nell; I wonder if you meant anything by saying that I had come back too late? I thought, you know, when I met your mother——”

“Oh, I want to hear about the fighting—the buccaneers. I don’t want to hear about my mother. I hear enough about her. You fought the pirates? Well, next to being a pirate yourself that’s the best thing.”

“Well, if you must know, I got about me a few score of lads—most of them were stout Irish lads— who were sold to the plantations by Cromwell.”

“The monster!”

“Ay, we made up a fine crew, I can tell you. Our plan was to do no pirating on our own behalf, but only to attack the pirates when they had a deck-load of spoil. Taking from thieves isn’t stealing, is it, Nell?”

“No, that’s business.”

“A bit irregular it may be, as I said just now; but bless you, Nelly, it was like sermon-preaching compared to some sorts of business that thrive mightily at the Indies. Anyhow, here I am today, sound and hearty, Nell, with a pretty nice fortune made already, and more to come—here I am, ready and willing to buy you the best pair of shoes in London town, and every other article of attire you may need for the next dozen—ay, the next fifty years.”

“Dick—Dick!”

“Isn’t it true that you were always my sweetheart, Nell? Didn’t you say that you would never marry another? Well, you’ve kept your word so far —your mother told me that.”

“Ah, that’s the worst of it”

“The worst of it! That’s the best of it, Nelly; for though a fine lady living in a mansion like this —why it might be a palace—the King himself might come here.”

“The King—you’ve heard that—that the King—” She grasped him fiercely by the sleeve, and was eagerly peering into his face.

He burst out laughing, but suddenly checked himself.

“The King—the King—what was there for me to hear?” he asked in a low voice. “I only arrived from Bristol port in the morning. How could I hear anything? I don’t want to hear anything except to hear you say that you haven’t broken your promise—that you haven’t married anyone else.”

“Oh, go away, Dick—go away!” she cried, burying her face on the arm of the settee.

He got upon his feet slowly and painfully, and stood over her.

“Why should I go away?” he asked in the same grave voice. “If I love you—and you know I do— and if you love me—and I believe that you do—it is not for me to go away. Ah, is it possible that you have given your promise to marry someone else! Don’t weep, Nell, that’s it, I see, and it can be made all right. Is that it, dear?”

“No, no. Oh, go away—go away, and never return to make me feel how miserable I am!”

“I’ll not go away. There’s some mystery about you and this house, and I’ll not go before I fathom it.”

She looked up and saw him standing there with his arms folded.

She leapt up so quickly that she almost seemed to spring into his arms. He thought so at anyrate, and was about to clasp her when she caught both of his hands in her own, gazing tearfully—eagerly— wistfully into his face.

“Dick—dear Dick,” she said; “if you love me still—and I know you do—you will leave me now. Oh, you should never have come here—I did not mean you to come; but, if you love me, Dick, you will leave me now—leave me and go into the nearest coffee-house and ask of the first man you see there who is Nell Gwyn—what is Nell Gwyn. If you return to me after that, then—then, Dick, I swear to you that I’ll marry you—there will be none to stay us then—none to come between—the King himself shall not come between us.”

He gripped her hands fiercely, his face close down to hers.

“By God, I’ll do it!” he said through his set teeth. “I’ll do it. You have put it upon me. I know that I shall hear nothing but what is good of you, and Pll return to claim you as sure as there’s a sun in heaven.”

He dropped her hands, snatched up his hat, and walked firmly to the door. When there he turned slowly and looked back at her. She was standing pale and lovely where he had left her. Her eyes were upon his face.

He flung himself through the door, and she fell on her knees beside the settee, burying her face in one of its cushions.

For some minutes nothing was heard in the room but the sound of her sobs; but then the silence was broken by a shout outside—a shout and the noise of a scuffle. Cries of “Hold him back! Hold him back!” came from the servants, and mixed with some full-bodied imprecations in other voices. Nell started to her feet as the door of the room was all but crashed in, and she was standing with a startled look on her face as the door was flung wide, and Dick Harraden hurled a limp antagonist into the room.

“He shall eat his words—every foul word he uttered he shall swallow in the presence of Nell herself,” cried Dick, and then Nell recognised Sir Charles Sedley as the man who was standing panting, with a broken sword in his hand, by her side, facing Dick.

“For God’s sake, Dick!—Sir Charles—what has happened?”

The courtier was too breathless to speak—he signified so much very pleasingly to Nell.

“The cowardly knave!” panted Dick. “But I swore that I’d make him eat his words, and by the Lord Harry I’ll keep my oath.”

“Sir Charles, pray—oh, Dick!”

“Dick me no Dicks, Nell, until this popinjay has gone down on his knees before you and asked your pardon for his foul words,” cried Dick. “Down you go, my gentleman, were you fifty times Sir Charles!”

“For Heaven’s sake, Nell, keep that fire-eater at a distance,” gasped Sir Charles. “He’s fit for Bedlam.”

“Stand where you be, Dick,” said Nell. “What said Sir Charles Sedley to give you offence?”

“He said that you—no, I’ll hang in chains in Execution Dock before I repeat the lie—but he’ll take it back—every word, if I have to wring his neck?”

Dick was with difficulty kept at a distance.

“Did he say aught about the King and me?” asked Nell in a low voice.

“It was, I swear, a most unhappy contretemps, Nell,” said Sir Charles, smiling in a somewhat constrained way. “How could I know that there was one man in England who didn’t know how splendid, yet how natural, a conquest the charms of Mistress Eleanor Gwyn have achieved?”

“Then you only spoke the truth, Sir Charles,” said Nell.

“God above us!”

Dick staggered back and grasped the frame of a chair to support himself.

There was a long silence.

He took a faltering step or two toward where she stood in the middle of the room.

“I see it all now,” he said in a low voice. “I see it all. This house—the lackeys in scarlet—the King’s servants—they are the King’s servants, and you—you, Nell, are the King’s—oh, God—let me die—let me die! This is what I came home for— you told me to go to the first coffee-house—I didn’t need to go so far. Oh, Nelly, if I had come home to stand beside the green hillock of your grave I could have borne it—but this—this!”

He dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands. His sobbing was the only sound in the room.

After a long pause he got slowly upon his feet.

“I‘m going away,” he said. “My heart is broken, Nell—my heart is broken. Good-bye, Nell.”

“Good-bye, Dick.”

She had not moved from the middle of the room. She did not hold out a hand to him. He walked slowly to the door. Then he turned round.

“I humbly ask your pardon, sir,” he said to Sir Charles.

“Sir,” said the courtier, “I honour you more than any living man.”

“Nell—Nell — come to me—come away with me — come to my arms, Nell,” cried the man, holding out his hands to her from where he stood.

Sir Charles watched her face. He saw it light up for a moment. Her hands moved; she was going to him.

No, she only looked at the man who loved her and was ready to offer her everything, and said—

“Dick, I have a boy in a cradle upstairs.”

There was another long pause before Dick whispered the words: “God bless thee, Nell!”

Then the door was flung wide in his face by a lackey who bowed to the ground as he ushered in a rather plain-faced man wearing a diamond star and a broad blue sash as well as a diamond garter.

Nell sank in a courtesy and Sir Charles Sedley made an obeisance. Dick remained unmoved.

“Ha—what have we here?” said the stranger. “I’ faith a pretty family picture! Who may you be, good sir?” he asked of Dick.

“Who may you be?” asked Dick.

“Well, who I may be in a year or two the Lord and Nelly only knows—she says a merry pauper. But who I am is easier said; I happen just now to be the King.”

Dick stood unmoved.

“Then I could tell you what you are, sir,” said Dick.

“Not half as well hs I could tell you, my friend,” said the King.

“I wonder if your Majesty ever hears the truth,” said Dick.

“Seldom; any time I do, it comes from the lips of Nelly yonder,” replied the King. “And by my soul, sir, I would rather hear the truth from Nelly than a lie from the most honourable of my subjects.”

“Profligate!” cried Dick.

“I answer to that name, sir; what then?” said the King.

“What then? God only can reply to your ‘what then?’ The answer rests with Him. He will not forget to answer you when His time comes.”

“Even so,” said the King in a low tone, bending his head.

Sir Charles had moved round the settee and had opened the door. He touched Dick on the elbow. Dick started for a moment, and then stalked through the door. Sir Charles went out with his face turned toward the King.

“A straightforward fellow, but as conceited as a Puritan, Nell,” cried the King with a laugh.

But Nell had sunk once more on her knees beside the settee, and her face was, as before, buried in the cushion.

“Ha, what’s this, Nelly? What’s amiss?” said the King, bending over her.

“Oh, go away—go away; I never want to see you again. You heard the word—Profligate! Profligate!”

“I’ll go away, Nell, so soon as I pass to you the two papers which I hold in my hand.”

“I want no papers. I want to be alone,”

“Come, dear child. See if you will like your new plaything.”

He pushed before her one of the two papers which he held.

She glanced at it without rising, and without taking it from him. Suddenly she put out a hand to it.

“What?” she cried. She was now on her feet. “You have done it for me—all for me! The hospital to be built at Chelsea. Oh, my liege!”

“Now the other paper,” said the King.

She took it from him.

“Ah, Royal Letters Patent — our boy — our Charlie—Duke of St Albans! Oh, my liege—my King—my love for ever!”

She sank on her knees, and catching his hand, covered it with kisses—with kisses and tears.

THE END.