showed a very different metal.  She was furious at the indignity of the King’s intrusion on her privacy, and proceeded to read him such a lecture as his Royal ears had never listened to.  She was no slave, she said, with flashing eyes, to be treated in such a manner, not to be allowed to receive visits from a man of the Duke of Richmond’s rank, who came with honourable intentions.  She was perfectly free to dispose of her hand as she thought proper; and if she could not do it in England, there was no power on earth that could hinder her from going over to France, and throwing herself into a convent to enjoy that tranquillity that was denied her in his Court!  And the enraged beauty wound up her lecture by pointing imperiously to the door and bidding the King begone, “to leave her in repose, at least for the remainder of the night.”

Charles went away baffled and cowed, but with a fierce rage in his heart.  He had been defied, browbeaten, insulted by the woman for whom he would almost have bartered his crown; and he vowed that he would be revenged.  On the following morning Miss Stuart, her anger now cooled, and awake to the enormity of her offence against Charles, sought an audience with Queen Catherine, to whom she told the whole story, begging her to appease the King, and to induce him to allow her to retire to a convent.  So affecting was this interview that, we are told, the Queen and the maid-of-honour mingled their tears together, and Catherine promised to do her utmost to bring about a reconciliation.

One final attempt Charles made to capture the prize before it was lost to him for ever.  He offered to dismiss all his mistresses, from the Castlemaine herself to saucy Nell Gwynn, and to dower her with large revenues and splendid titles if she would but consent to be his maitresse en titre; but to all his seductions and bribes the inflexible maid-of-honour turned a blind eye.  No future, however dazzling, could compensate her for the loss of her dearest possession.  “I hope,” said the King at last, “I may live to see you old and willing,” as he walked away in high dudgeon.  To the proposed match with the Duke he point-blank refused his consent, and vowed that if his sovereign will were defied, the punishment would be in proportion to the offence.

But the fair Stuart had finally made up her mind.  It had long been her ambition—­from childhood, it is said—­to be a Duchess, and she was not going to let the opportunity slip for all the kings in the world.  What might come after was another matter.  A Duchess’s coronet and a wedding-ring were her immediate goal.  Thus it came to pass that one dark night she stole away from the Palace of Whitehall, and was rowed to London Bridge, where the Duke awaited her in his coach.  Through the night the runaway pair were driven to Cobham Hall, in Kent, where, long before morning dawned, an obliging parson had made them man and wife.  Frances Stuart was a Duchess at last; and Charles’s long intrigue had ended (or so it seemed) in final discomfiture.