untered beside her across the room was no more than a
mask upon his chagrin. It was always thus that pretty Frances Stewart
used him. She always knew how to elude him and, always with that cursed
air of artlessness, uttered seemingly simple sentences that clung to his
mind to tantalize him.

"The castle your Majesty would build for any but your Queen must prove
a prison." What had she meant by that? Must he take her to queen before
she would allow him to build a castle for her?

It was an insistent, haunting thought, wracking his mind. He knew there
was a party hostile to the Duke of York and Clarendon, which, fearing
the succession of the former, and, so, of the grandchildren of the
latter, as a result of Catherine of Braganza's childlessness, strongly
favoured the King's divorce.

It was a singular irony that my Lady Castlemaine should be largely
responsible for the existence of that party. In her hatred for
Clarendon, and her blind search for weapons that would slay the
Chancellor, she had, if not actually invented, at least helped to give
currency to the silly slander that Clarendon had deliberately chosen for
Charles a barren queen, so as to ensure the ultimate succession of his
own daughter's children. But she had never thought to see that slander
recoil upon her as it now did; she had never thought that a party would
come to rise up in consequence that would urge divorce upon the King at
the very moment when he was consumed by passion for the unattainable,
artlessly artful Frances Stewart.

It was Buckingham, greatly daring, who slyly made himself that party's
mouthpiece. The suggestion startled Charles, voicing, as perhaps it
did, the temptation by which he was secretly assailed. He looked at
Buckingham, frowning.

"I verily believe you are the wickedest dog in England."

The impudent gallant made a leg. "For a subject, sire, I believe I am."

Charles--with whom the amusing word seems ever to have been more
compelling than the serious--laughed his soft, mellow laugh. Then he
sighed, and the frown of thought returned.

"It would be a wicked thing to make a poor lady miserable only because
she is my wife, and has no children by me, which is no fault of hers."

He was a thoroughly bad husband, but his indolent good-nature shrank
from purchasing his desires at the price of so much ignominy to the
Queen. Before that could come to pass it would be necessary to give the
screw of temptation another turn or two