im to a lady's favour. Such
a gilded nonentity was Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond and of Lennox,
who, having buried two wives, now began to cast envious eyes on the
maid-of-honour whom his Sovereign could not win.

Small in stature, deformed in figure--a caricature of a man, His Grace
of Richmond was the last degenerate scion of the Stuarts of
Richmond-d'Aubigny, a man of depraved tastes and besotted brain, the
butt and the clown of Charles's Court. That this middle-aged buffoon
should aspire to the hand of the loveliest and most elusive woman in
England was only less amazing than that she should smile on his suit.
The Court was struck with consternation--and convulsed with laughter.
Nothing so utterly astonishing and so ludicrous had come within its
experience. But there could be no doubt about it. _La belle Stuart_, who
had so long resisted the King, and given the cold shoulder to such
gallants as the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Arlington, was not only
smiling on her ill-favoured suitor, she was actually giving him midnight
assignations in her own apartments, and risking for a clown the
reputation a King had been powerless to sully.

Here, at last, was a fine weapon placed in the hands of the outraged and
vindictive Castlemaine. Here was a splendid opportunity of paying off
old scores, of showing to her Royal lover the kind of woman for whom he
had supplanted her, and of reinstating herself in his good graces. One
night, as he returned in an evil temper from a fruitless visit to Miss
Stuart's apartments, from which he had been sent away on some frivolous
pretext, he was accosted by my Lady Castlemaine, who, with ill-concealed
triumph, told him that at the moment _La belle Stuart_ turned him away
from her door, she was actually dallying with his new and contemptible
rival, the Duke of Richmond, at the other side of it.

Charles was incredulous, furious at the suggestion. "Come with me," Lady
Castlemaine answered, "and I will prove that I am telling you the simple
truth;" and taking his hand she led him exultantly down the gallery from
his apartments to the threshold of Miss Stuart's door, where, with a
sweeping curtsy and an invitation to enter, she left him. On throwing
open the door, to quote Hamilton, the King

"found Miss Stuart in bed, but far from being asleep. The
Duke of Richmond was seated at her pillow, and in all
probability was less inclined to sleep than herself. The
King, who of