Among the queen’s maids of honour, there was one called Warmestre:  she was a beauty very different from the other.  Mrs. Middleton was well made, fair, and delicate; but had in her behaviour and discourse something precise and affected.  The indolent languishing airs she gave herself did not please everybody:  people grew weary of those sentiments of delicacy, which she endeavoured to explain without understanding them herself; and instead of entertaining she became tiresome.  In these attempts she gave herself so much trouble, that she made the company uneasy, and her ambition to pass for a wit, only established her the reputation of being tiresome, which lasted much longer than her beauty.

Miss Warmestre was brown:  she had no shape at all, and still less air; but she had a very lively complexion, very sparkling eyes, tempting looks, which spared nothing that might ensnare a lover, and promised everything which could preserve him.  In the end, it very plainly appeared that her consent went along with her eyes to the last degree of indiscretion.

It was between these two goddesses that the inclinations of the Chevalier de Grammont stood wavering, and between whom his presents were divided.  Perfumed gloves, pocket looking-glasses, elegant boxes, apricot paste, essences, and other small wares of love, arrived every week from Paris, with some new suit for himself; but, with regard to more solid presents, such as ear-rings, diamonds, brilliants, and bright guineas, all this was to be met with of the best sort in London, and the ladies were as well pleased with them as if they had been brought from abroad.

Miss Stewart’s beauty began at this time to be celebrated.

[Frances, Duchess of Richmond, daughter of Walter Stewart, son of Walter, Baron of Blantyre, and wife of Charles Stewart, Duke of Richmond and Lennox:  a lady of exquisite beauty, if justly represented in a puncheon made by Roettiere, his majesty’s engraver of the mint, in order to strike a medal of her, which exhibits the finest face that perhaps was ever seen.  The king was supposed to be desperately in love with her; and it became common discourse, that there was a design on foot to get him divorced from the queen, in order to marry this lady.  Lord Clarendon was thought to have promoted the match with the Duke of Richmond, thereby to prevent the other design, which he imagined would hurt the king’s character, embroil his affairs at present, and entail all the evils of a disputed succession on the nation.  Whether he actually encouraged the Duke of Richmond’s marriage, doth not appear; but it is certain that he was so strongly possessed of the king’s inclination to a divorce, that, even after his disgrace, he was persuaded the Duke of Buckingham had under taken to carry that matter through the parliament.  It is certain too that the king considered him as the chief promoter of Miss Stewart’s marriage, and resented it in the highest degree. (See Pepys’