“Did you not set out this morning with the avowed purpose of going to your father’s house?” asked the king.

“Yes, your Majesty,” she answered soothingly, almost pityingly.  “What then?”

“Did you go there?” asked Charles.

“No, your Majesty.”

“Where did you go?”

“Am I a prisoner in Whitehall that I may not come and go at will?” she asked indignantly, knowing well the maxim of battle that the best way to meet a charge is by a countercharge.  “If so, I pray leave to go home to my father, where I shall not be spied upon and suspected of evil if I but go abroad for an hour.”

Her grief had changed to indignation, and she turned her face from the king, drying the supposed tears and exhibiting her temper in irresistible pantomime.  The king was but a man, so of course Frances’s tears and her just anger routed him.  A brave man may stand against powder and steel, but he must flee before fire and flood.

Immediately the king became apologetic:  “I do not suspect you of evil, but of thoughtlessness, my beautiful one,” he said, trying to take her hand, but failing.  “Nor have I spied upon you.  I heard that you had gone to the Old Swan to see Hamilton, whom it is said you love.”

Pantomime to show great grief and a deep sense of cruel injury, but the tears ceased to flow because of the fact that she was past tears now.

“I’ll leave Whitehall this day!” she said, shaking her head dolefully.  “I am not strong enough to bear your Majesty’s unjust frown.  I have tried to do right, tried to please you and the duchess—­everybody, and this is my reward!  I know little of Master Hamilton, having seen him only a few times in all my life.  If I had no other cause to shun him, his character would be sufficient.”

Again the handkerchief was brought to the eyes effectively, for the purpose of giving the king a little time in which to see how grievously he had wronged her.  It required but little time for him to realize how cruel he had been, and in a moment he said pleadingly:—­

“Your king asks your forgiveness.  I do not suspect you of having gone to see Hamilton.  I am convinced that I was wrong.  But won’t you tell me, please, why you visited the Old Swan?  It is a decent tavern, I understand, but a public place of the sort should not be visited by one such as you unescorted.”

“Your Majesty is right, and I thank you for the reprimand,” returned Frances, drying her eyes.  “But Pickering, who is the host of the Old Swan, has a daughter, Bettina, who is a good girl, far above her station.  She is my friend.  I went to see her this morning to drink a cup of wormwood wine with her.  Now you know my reason for going.”

Wormwood wine was considered a toper’s drink.

Her confusion and modest hesitancy in confessing to the wormwood wine were so pretty and so convincing that the king laughed and seized her by the arm affectionately:—­