arried her games and toys into the sacred
environment of the Audience Chamber. Seated on the floor, innocently
exposing the prettiest pair of ankles in England, and surrounded by her
big playfellows, she would challenge them to a competition in
castle-building with cards; and when her carefully-reared edifice
toppled to the ground she would break into a silvery peal of laughter,
and clap her hands for the King to come and help her to rebuild it, for
no less distinguished assistant would she allow to touch her cards. And
Charles never failed to respond to the summons, though he were
hobnobbing with chancellor or archbishop, and would be sent away happy,
with a kiss for his pains. No wonder poor Pepys was horrified at such
unseemly goings-on.

And equally small wonder that the King's mistresses and the great ladies
of the Court cast many a jealous and vindictive glance on the child, who
had power to lure away their slaves to her nursery shrine. The Duke of
Buckingham, himself, was prouder to be her favourite playfellow than of
all his conquests in the field of love. He wrote songs, and sang them
for her pleasure; he kept her in a ripple of laughter for hours together
by his stories and clever mimicry, and rushed to her side whenever she
summoned him to build card-castles or to join in a romp--until what was
"play to the child" began to prove a serious matter to the man of the
world. He found that, while he was building castles or chasing the
elusive fairy blindfolded, she had stolen his heart away; but when he
ventured to tell his love to her she boxed his ears, and told him to run
away and not be so naughty again.

Was there ever so tantalising and inscrutable a maid? And as she had
treated the King and his chief favourite, she treated all her other
playfellows. The Earl of Arlington, a grave, dignified Lord of the
Bedchamber, so far unbended as to make love to the little witch, who
stood so well in the favour of his Sovereign; and never did man exert
himself more to win the favour of a maid.

"Having provided himself," says Hamilton, "with a great
number of maxims and some historical anecdotes, he
obtained an audience of Miss Stuart, in order to display
them; at the same time offering her his most humble
services in the situation to which it had pleased God and
her virtue to raise her. But he was only in the preface
of his speech, when he reminded her so ludicrously of
Bucking