Such was Frances Stuart when she made her appearance at the Court of Charles II. as maid-of-honour, to his Queen, Catherine; and one can scarcely wonder that, even among the most beautiful women in England, the French “Mademoiselle,” as she was called, was hailed as a new revelation of female fascination, especially as she brought with her the bubbling gaiety and passionate zest of life of the land of her exile.

To the “Merrie Monarch’s” senses, sated with riper beauties and more stolid charms, this unspoiled child of nature was as a wild rose compared with exotic hot-house flowers.  She was, he vowed, so “dainty, so fresh, so fragrant,” that none but the sourest of anchorites could resist her—­and he was no anchorite, as the world knew well.  Almost at sight of her he fell madly in love with her, and brought to bear on her the battery of all his fascinations.  Was ever maid placed, on the threshold of life, in so dangerous a predicament?  For the King, who was her first lover, was also one of the most captivating men in England, a past-master in the conquest of woman.  But, in response to all his advances, his honeyed words and oglings, the Stuart maid only laughed a merry childish laugh.  She would romp with him, as she had done with the gallants at the French Court; to her he was only another “big playfellow” to tease and play with.  She knew nothing of love, and did not wish to know more.  He might kiss her—­vraiment—­why not? and that Charles made abundant use of this concession, we know, for we are told that “he would kiss her for half an hour at a time,” caring little who looked on.

And all her other Whitehall lovers—­a legion of them, from the Duke of Buckingham to the youngest page at Court, she treated in precisely the same way.  Was it innocence or artfulness, this assumption of childish prudery?  “She was a child,” says Count Hamilton, “in all respects save playing with dolls”—­a child who refused to grow into a woman, and yet, one shrewdly suspects that behind her childishness was a motive deeper than is usually associated with so much simplicity.

She infected the whole Court with her exuberant youthfulness.  Basset-tables and boudoir intrigues were alike deserted to enjoy the new era of nursery games which she inaugurated.  Jaded gallants and sedate Ladies of the Bedchamber mingled their shrieks of laughter in blind-man’s buff and hunt-the-slipper with the Stuart maid as Lady of Misrule and arch-spirit of jollity.  Pepys was shocked—­or affected to be—­one day by seeing all the great and fair ones of the Court squatting on the floor in the Whitehall gallery playing at “I love my love with an A because he is Amorous”; “I hate him with a B because he is Boring,” and so on; and no doubt rocking with glee at some sally of wit, for, Pepys says, “some of them were very witty.”