His mother’s eyes were of so dark a violet that ’twas his fancy of them that they looked like the velvet of a purple pansy.  Her complexion was of roses and lilies, and had in truth by nature that sweet bloom which Sir Peter Lely was kind enough to bestow upon every beauty of King Charles’s court his brush made to live on canvas.  She was indeed a lovely creature and a happy one, her life with her husband and child so contenting her that, young though she was, she cared as little for Court life as my lord Duke, who, having lived longer in its midst than she, had no taste for its intrigues and the vices which so flourished in its hot-bed.  Though the noblest Duke in England, and of a family whose whole history was enriched with services to the royal house, his habits and likings were not such as made noblemen favourites at the court of Charles the Second.  He was not given to loose adventure, and had not won the heart of my Lady Castlemaine, since he had made no love to her, which was not a thing to be lightly forgiven to any handsome and stalwart gentleman.  Besides this, he had been so moved by the piteous case of the poor Queen, during her one hopeless battle for her rights when this termagant beauty was first thrust upon her as lady of her bedchamber, that on those cruel days during the struggle when the poor Catherine had found herself sitting alone, deserted, while her husband and her courtiers gathered in laughing, worshipping groups about her triumphant rival, this one gentleman had sought by his courteous respect to support her in her humiliated desolation, though the King himself had first looked black and then had privately mocked at him.

“He hath fallen in love with her,” the Castlemaine had said afterwards to a derisive group; “he hath fallen deep in love—­with her long teeth and her Portuguese farthingale.”

“She needs love, poor soul, Heaven knows,” the Duke returned, when this speech was repeated to him.  “A poor girl taken from her own country, married to a King, and then insulted by his Court and his mistresses!  Some man should remember her youth and desolateness, and not forget that another man has broke her heart and lets his women laugh at her misfortunes.”

’Twould have been a dangerous speech perhaps had a man of the Court of Henry the Eighth made it, even to a friend, but Charles was too lightly vicious and too fond of gay scenes to be savage.  His brutality was such as was carelessly wreaked on hearts instead of heads—­hearts he polluted, made toys of, flung in the mire or broke; heads he left on the shoulders they belonged to.  But he did not love his Grace of Osmonde, and though his rank and character were such that he could not well treat him with indignity, he did not regret that after his Grace’s marriage with the Lady Rosalys Delile he appeared but seldom at Court.

“He is a tiresome fellow, for one can find no fault with him,” his Majesty said, fretfully.  “Odd’s fish! fortune is on his side where my house is concerned.  His father fought at Edgehill and Marston Moor, and they tell me died but two years after Naseby of a wound he had there.  Let him go and bury himself on his great estates, play the benefactor to his tenantry, listen to his Chaplain’s homilies, and pay stately visits to the manors of his neighbours.”