er husband."

Will Bush set down his tankard with a smack upon the table before the
sitting-bench.

"She had but once appeared at Whitehall when his Grace met her and fell
deep in love that hour," he said.

"Was't not rumoured," said Tom Comfort, somewhat lowering his voice,
"that _He_ cast glances her way as he casts them on every young beauty
brought before him, and that his Grace could scarce hold his
tongue--King or no King?"

"Ay," said Will Bush, sharply, "his royal glance fell on her, and he
made a jest on what a man's joy would be whose fortune it was to see
her violet eyes melt in love--and his Grace went to her mother, the
Lady Elspeth, and besought her to let him proffer his vows to the young
lady; and she was his Duchess in ten months' time--and Madame Carwell
had come from France, and in a year was made Duchess of Portsmouth."

"Heard you not that she too--some three weeks past--?" quoth Comfort,
who was as fond of gossip as an old woman.

"Seventeen days gone," put in Bush; "and 'twas dead, by Heaven's mercy,
poor brat. They say she loses her looks, and that his Majesty tires of
her, and looks already toward other quarters." And so they sat over
their ale and gossiped, they being supplied with anecdote by his
Grace's gentleman's gentleman, who was fond of Court life and found the
country tiresome, and whose habit it was to spend an occasional evening
at the Plough Horse for the pleasure of having even an audience of
yokels; liking it the better since, being yokels, they would listen
open-mouthed and staring by the hour to his swagger and stories of
Whitehall and Hampton Court, and the many beauties who surrounded the
sacred person of his most gracious Majesty, King Charles the Second.
Every yokel in the country had heard rumours of these ladies, but Mr.
Mount gave those at Camylott village details which were often true and
always picturesque.

"What could be expected," he would say, "of a man who had lived in gay
exile through his first years, and then of a sudden was made a King,
and had all the beauties of England kneeling before him--and he with a
squat, black, long-toothed Portugee fastened to him for a wife? And
Mistress Barbara Palmer at him from his first landing on English soil
to be restored--she that was made my Lady Castlemaine."

And then he would relate stories of this beauteous fury, and her
tempestuous quarrels with the King, and of how 'twas known his ease and
pleasure-loving natu