Chapter 2 - Page 2

wherefore, he
comprehended vaguely that she was of a world to which the rest of his
attendants did not belong. 'Twas not that she was of greatly superior
education and manners, since all those who waited upon him had been
carefully chosen; 'twas that she seemed to love him more gravely than
did the others, and to mean a deeper thing when she called him "my lord
Marquess." She was a pock-marked woman (she having taken the disease
from her late husband the Chaplain, who had died of that scourge), and
in her earliest bloom could have been but plainly favoured. She had a
large-boned frame, and but for a good and serious carriage would have
seemed awkward. She had, however, the good fortune to be the possessor
of a mellow voice, and to have clear grey eyes, set well and deep in
her head, and full of earnest meaning.

"Her I shall always remember," the young Marquess often said when he
had grown to be a man and was Duke, and had wife and children of his
own. "I loved to sit upon her knee, and lean against her breast, and
gaze up into her eyes. 'Twas my child-fancy that there was deep within
them something like a star, and when I gazed at it, I felt a kind of
loving awe such as grew within me when I lay and looked up at a star in
the sky."

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