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Frances Jennings and her younger sister Sarah, who afterwards became the first duchess of the present House of Marlborough, were the daughters of my uncle, Sir Richard Jennings, of Sundridge, near St. Albans.  With a fidelity more creditable to his heart than to his head, Sir Richard had clung to the cause of Charles I, had lost his entire fortune, and in the end was forced to bend his neck to the yoke of Cromwell to save his life.  When Charles II returned to the throne, he easily forgave Sir Richard his enforced apostasy, but failed to return his estates, forgiveness being so much easier than restitution to an indolent selfish nature.

So it was that at the time this story opens, which was several years after King Charles’s return, Sir Richard and his two daughters were living almost in poverty at Sundridge, hoping for help from the king, though little expecting it.  Without assistance furnished by myself and a former retainer of Sir Richard, one Roger Wentworth, who had become a prosperous tanner of Sundridge, my cousins and my uncle would have been reduced to want.  But Wentworth and I kept up a meagre household, and I was on watch at court to forward my uncle’s interest, if by any good fortune an opportunity should come.  At last, after long waiting, it came, though as often occurs with happiness delayed, it was mingled with bitterness.

I think it was in the year 1662 or ’63—­it may have been a year or two earlier or later, I cannot say at this distance of time—­the Duchess of York, who, with her husband, lived in Whitehall Palace with King Charles, announced her intention of choosing her maids of honor by personal inspection.  She declared that, barring the fact that the maids must be of good family, beauty would win the golden apple, as it had in olden Greece.  On hearing this news, I saw the opportunity for which I had waited so long.  If beauty was to be the test, surely my cousin Frances would become a maid of honor, and once at court, if she could keep her head and her heart, the fortunes of her house were sure to rise, for the world has never known so good a beauty market as Whitehall was at that time.

There was no question about my cousin’s beauty.  Would she be able to make it bring a price worthy of its quality?  To do this, she must have the cunning of the serpent, the virtue of a saint, and the courage of Roland himself.  She must not be fastidious, though she must be suspicious.  She must not be a prude, though she must know that all is evil about her.  Lastly she must have no heart, though she must learn the rare art of being tender to the right person at the right time.