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 all men was usually one of the most mild and gentle, testified his resentment to the Duke of Richmond in such terms as he had never used before.  The Duke was speechless and almost petrified; he saw his master and King justly irritated.  The first transports which rage inspires on such occasions are dangerous.  Miss Stuart’s window was very convenient for a sudden revenge, the Thames flowing close beneath it.  He cast his eyes upon it, and seeing those of the King more incensed and fired with indignation than he thought his nature capable of, he made a profound bow, and retired without replying a single word to the vast torrent of threats and menaces that were poured on him.”

But if the Duke proved thus a poltroon, Miss Stuart