“No, your Highness.  I ask for nothing save favor to my cousin,” I replied.

“She is like to have enough of that and to spare, without asking, if she is half as beautiful as she is said to be,” returned his Grace.

“Of that your Highness may now be your own judge,” I returned.  “Here she comes.”

At that moment Frances entered on the arm of the Mother of the Maids, and the duke, catching sight of her, exclaimed:—­

“God have pity on the other women!  Half has not been told, baron.  There is no beauty at court compared to hers.  Earl?  You may be a duke!”

While Frances and the Mother were making their way across the room to pay their respects to the duke and the duchess, a buzz of admiration could be heard on every hand, and Mary whispered to me behind her fan:—­

“If the king were unmarried, I would wager all I have that your cousin would be our queen within a month.”

Count Grammont, who was standing behind me, leaned forward and whispered, “Your cousin, baron?”

“Yes, count,” I answered.

“Mon Dieu!” he returned, shrugging his shoulders.  “You will soon be a duke.  We may not call her the queen of hearts, for already we have one, but surely she is the duchess of hearts.  I wish I might present her in Paris.  Ah Dieu!  She would make quickly my peace with my king!”

Poor Grammont’s one object in life was that his peace might be made with his king.  He lived only in the hope of a recall to Versailles.

Frances made a graceful courtesy, as she kissed their Highness’s hands, and, when the brief ceremony of presentation to the duke was over, turned to Mary and me, glad to have a moment’s respite beside us.  She said nothing, but I could see that for the moment the gorgeous scene about us had bewildered her.  The vast mouldings of gold, the frescoed cupids, nymphs and goddesses, the wonderful paintings, the brilliant tapestries, all fairly shone in the light of a thousand wax candles, while the polished floor of many-colored woods was a mirror under her feet, reflecting all this beauty.

The powdered and rouged courtiers, arrayed in silks, gold lace and jewels, seemed more like creatures from a land of phantasy than beings of flesh and blood.  The men with their great curled wigs, their plumed, bejewelled hats and glittering gold swords, seemed to have stepped from the pages of a wonderful picture-book, and the women, whose gorgeous gowns exposed their bepowdered skin halfway to their waists, measuring from the chin, and whose lifted petticoats made a proportionate display, measuring from the feet, surely were brought from some fair land of folly and shame.

I touched Frances’s hand to awaken her, and whispered:  “Show neither wonder nor interest.  See nothing, or these fools about us will laugh.”

She laughed nervously, nodding her head to tell me that she understood.

“But I must look.  I can’t help it,” she said.