had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had at least saved
the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.

It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah
Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower
as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with
queenly grace and dainty freshness among a crowd of the loveliest women
at a Royal ball, her proud well-poised head rising above them as a lily
towers over meaner flowers. And--such are the strange ways of love--from
that first glance he was fascinated by her as no other woman ever had
power to fascinate him. When he sought an introduction to her, the
bright spirit that shone in her eyes, her clever tongue, and her
graciousness quickly forged the chains which he was proud to wear to his
life's end. Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic--never
has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.

But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man--even by a
lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of
romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on
battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir,
and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel.
She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel
Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other
man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his
amorous advances she presented a smiling and inscrutable front; his
ardour was as unwelcome as it was premature.

Had she designed to make a conquest of her martial lover she could not
have set to work more diplomatically. Colonel Churchill had basked for
years in woman's smiles, often unsought and undesired; to coldness and
indifference he was a stranger; but they only served, as becomes a
soldier, to make him more resolute on victory. As a subtle tongue and a
handsome person made no impression on this frigid beauty, he had
recourse to his pen (since his sword was useless for such a conquest)
and inundated her with letters, breathing undying devotion, and craving
for at least a smile or a look of kindness.

"Show me," he writes, "that, at least, you are not quite
indifferent to me, and I swear that I will never love
anything but your dear self, which has made so sure a
conquest of me that, had I the will, I