“Ay,” said Will Bush, sharply, “his royal glance fell on her, and he made a jest on what a man’s joy would be whose fortune it was to see her violet eyes melt in love—­and his Grace went to her mother, the Lady Elspeth, and besought her to let him proffer his vows to the young lady; and she was his Duchess in ten months’ time—­and Madame Carwell had come from France, and in a year was made Duchess of Portsmouth.”

“Heard you not that she too—­some three weeks past—?” quoth Comfort, who was as fond of gossip as an old woman.

“Seventeen days gone,” put in Bush; “and ’twas dead, by Heaven’s mercy, poor brat.  They say she loses her looks, and that his Majesty tires of her, and looks already toward other quarters.”  And so they sat over their ale and gossiped, they being supplied with anecdote by his Grace’s gentleman’s gentleman, who was fond of Court life and found the country tiresome, and whose habit it was to spend an occasional evening at the Plough Horse for the pleasure of having even an audience of yokels; liking it the better since, being yokels, they would listen open-mouthed and staring by the hour to his swagger and stories of Whitehall and Hampton Court, and the many beauties who surrounded the sacred person of his most gracious Majesty, King Charles the Second.  Every yokel in the country had heard rumours of these ladies, but Mr. Mount gave those at Camylott village details which were often true and always picturesque.

“What could be expected,” he would say, “of a man who had lived in gay exile through his first years, and then of a sudden was made a King, and had all the beauties of England kneeling before him—­and he with a squat, black, long-toothed Portugee fastened to him for a wife?  And Mistress Barbara Palmer at him from his first landing on English soil to be restored—­she that was made my Lady Castlemaine.”

And then he would relate stories of this beauteous fury, and her tempestuous quarrels with the King, and of how ’twas known his ease and pleasure-loving nature stood in terror of her violence and gave way before it with bribes and promises through sheer weariness.

“’Tis not that he loves her best,” said Mr. Mount, snuff-taking in graceful Court fashion, “for he hath loved a dozen since; but she is a shrew, and can rave and bluster at him till he would hang her with jewels, and give her his crown itself to quieten her furies.  ’Tis the pretty orange wench and actor woman Nell Gwynne who will please him longest, for she is a good-humoured baggage and witty, and gives him rest.”

’Twas not alone Charles who was pleased with Nell Gwynne.  All England liked her, and the lower orders best of all, because she was merry and kind of heart and her jokes and open-handedness pleased them.  They were deep in the midst of a story of a poor gentleman in orders whom she had rescued from the debtors’ prison, when old Rowe, who had been watching the road leading from the park gates, pricked up his ears and left his seat, trembling with excitement.