etorted "I was so far from that, that had it not
been for shame I could have cried." She even swore that it was he who
avoided _her_; and he proves to her that he had followed her elusive
shadow everywhere, and had even "made his chair follow him, because I
would see if there was any light in your chamber, but I saw none."

But even this arch-coquette recognised that the most devoted lover's
forbearance has its bounds, and she was much too clever a woman to
strain them too far. When she had brought him to the verge of suicide by
her moods and vapours she saw that the time of surrender had come; and
when her lover's arm was at last around her waist and her head on his
shoulder, she vowed that she had never ceased to love him from the
first, and that she had never meant to be unkind!

Thus it came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's
Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the
portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the
lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill
could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left
to walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and
re-read, with tear-dimmed eyes, the faded letters which her coldness had
wrung from her lover in the flood-tide of his passion and his despair.

CHAPTER X

THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER

When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the
eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a "quiverful" of
offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family
annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done
so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die
in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate
could sully her.

Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to the Earldom of
Kingston, and member of a family which had held its head high, and
preserved an untarnished 'scutcheon since its founder, Sir John King,
won Queen Elizabeth's favour by his zeal in suppressing the Irish
rebellion. All its men had been honourable, all its women pure; and it
was not until Mary King came on the scene that this fair repute was ever
in danger.

Not that there was anything vicious in Lord Kingsborough's young
daughter. She was the victim of a weak nature and a lover as
unscrupulous as he was handsome and clever.