and a man who has desires for place and power is not to be trusted by one who has gained the highest and is attacked by jealousy on all sides.  This man was rich, of high rank, and desired nothing his Grace wished to retain; besides this, his nature was large and so ruled by high honour that ’twas not in him to scheme or parley with schemers.  So it befel that, despite his youth, he enjoyed the privilege of being treated as if his years had been as ripe as his intellect.  He knew and learned many things.  Less was hid from him than from any other man in the army, had the truth been known.  When ’twas a burning necessity for the great man to cross to England to persuade her Majesty to change her ministers, Roxholm knew the processes by which the end was reached.  He had knowledge of all the feverish fits through which political England passed, in greater measure than he himself was conscious of.  His reflections upon the affairs of Portugal and their management, his belief in the importance of the Emperor’s reconciliation with the Protestants of Hungary, and of many a serious matter, were taken into consideration and pondered over when he knew it not.  In hastening across the Channel to the English Court, in journeying to Berlin to encounter great personages, in hearing of and beholding intrigue, triumphs, disappointments, pomps, and vanities, he studied in the best possible school the art and science of statesmanship, and won for himself a place in men’s minds and memories.

When, after Blenheim, he returned to England with a slight wound, his appearance at Court was regarded as an event of public interest, and commented upon with flowery rhetoric in the journals.  The ladies vowed he had actually grown taller than before, that his deep eyes had a power no woman could resist, and that there was indeed no gentleman in England to compare with him either for intellect, beauty, or breeding.  Her Majesty showed him a particular favour, and it was rumoured that she had remarked that, had one of her many dead infants lived and grown to such a manhood, she would have been a happy woman.  Duchess Sarah melted to him as none had ever seen her melt to man before.  She had heard many stories of him from her lord, and was prepared to be gracious, but when she beheld him, she was won by another reason, for he brought back to her the day when she had been haughty, penniless Sarah Jennings, and the man who seemed to her almost godlike in his youth and beauty had knelt at her feet.

’Twas most natural that at this time there should be much speculation as to the beauty who might be chosen as his partner in life by a young nobleman of such fortune, a young hero held in such esteem by his country as well as by the world of fashion.  Conversation was all the more rife upon the subject because his Lordship paid no special court to any and seemed a heart-free man.