. And it was Miss Stewart herself
who--in all innocence--supplied what was required in that direction.
Driven to bay by the importunities of Charles, she announced at last
that it was her intention to retire from Court, so as to preserve
herself from the temptations by which she was beset, and to determine
the uneasiness which, through no fault of her own, her presence was
occasioning the Queen; and she announced further, that, so desperate had
she been rendered that she would marry any gentleman of fifteen hundred
pounds a year who would have her in honour.

You behold Charles reduced to a state of panic. He sought to bribe
her with offers of any settlements she chose to name, or any title she
coveted, offering her these things at the nation's expense as freely
and lightly as the jewels he had tossed into her lap, or the collar
of pearls worth sixteen hundred pounds he had put about her neck. The
offers were ineffectual, and Charles, driven almost to distraction
by such invulnerable virtue, might now have yielded to the insidious
whispers of divorce and re-marriage had not my Lady Castlemaine taken a
hand in the game.

Her ladyship, dwelling already, as a consequence of that royal
infatuation for Miss Stewart, in the cold, rarefied atmosphere of a
neglect that amounted almost to disgrace, may have considered with
bitterness how her attempt to exploit her hatred of the Chancellor had
recoiled upon herself.

In the blackest hour of her despair, when hope seemed almost dead, she
made a discovery--or, rather, the King's page, the ineffable Chiffinch,
Lord Keeper of the Back Stairs and Grand-Eunuch of the Royal Seraglio,
who was her ladyship's friend, made it and communicated it to her
There had been one ardent respondent in the Duke of Richmond to that
proclamation of Miss Stewart's that she would marry any gentleman of
fifteen hundred pounds a year. Long enamoured of her, his Grace saw here
his opportunity, and he seized it. Consequently he was now in constant
attendance upon her, but very secretly, since he feared the King's
displeasure.

My Lady Castlemaine, having discovered this, and being well served in
the matter by Chiffinch, spied her opportunity. It came one cold night
towards the end of February of that year 1667. Charles, going below at a
late hour to visit Miss Stewart, when he judged that she would be
alone, was informed by her maid that Miss was not receiving, a headache
compelling her to keep her room.