in his comradeship.  He first won her heart in the following fashion.  One day old Lord Carlingford was delighting and convulsing her by placing a lighted candle in his mouth, and hobbling to and fro thus illuminated.  “I can do better than that,” exclaimed the irrepressible Hamilton.  “Give me two candles.”  The candles were produced.  Hamilton lit them, and thrust the pair into his capacious mouth, and minced three times round the room before they were extinguished, while La belle Stuart paraded after him, clapping her hands and laughing in her glee.

Such a feat was an efficient passport to her favour.  Rollicking George was at once installed as playmate-in-chief to the spoiled child, and was privileged with a greater intimacy than any of her other favourites had ever enjoyed.

“Since the Court has been in the country,” he confessed, “I have had a hundred opportunities of seeing her.  You know that the deshabille of the bath is a great convenience for those ladies who, strictly adhering to their rules of decorum, are yet desirous to display all their charms and attractions.  Miss Stuart is so fully acquainted with the advantages she possesses over all other women, that it is hardly possible to praise any lady at Court for a well-turned arm and a fine leg, but she is ever ready to dispute the point by demonstration.  After all, a man must be very insensible to remain unconcerned and unmoved on such happy occasions.”

It is conceivable that Hamilton, stimulated by such, no doubt, artless encouragement as he seems to have enjoyed, might have made a conquest where so many had failed, had not his future brother-in-law, Gramont, taken him seriously to task and warned him of the grave danger of flirting with the lady on whom the King had set eyes of love, and persuaded him at the eleventh hour to beat a dignified retreat.

Pepys draws a pretty picture of Miss Stuart at this time, as he saw her riding, among the Ladies of Honour, with the Queen in the Park.

“I followed them,” he says, “up into Whitehall, and into the Queen’s presence, where all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying one another’s by one another’s heads and laughing.  But, above all, Mrs Stuart in this dresse, with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eyes, little Roman nose, and excellent taille, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life; and, if ever woman can, do exceed my Lady Castlemaine, at least in this dress.  Nor do I wonder if the King changes, which I verily believe is the reason of his coldness to my Lady Castlemaine.”

How many hearts Frances Stuart toyed with and broke in these days of her girlish beauty and irresponsibility will never be known; but we know that at least one hopeless wooer committed suicide, and another, Francis Digby, Lord Bristol’s handsome son, after years of unrequited idolatry, in his despair rushed away to seek and find death in the Dutch war.