*CHAPTER V.* *A HIGH-BORN DAME.* Westward from Whitehall, just after one had left behind the streets and lanes of the fashionable westerly portion of London town, and emerged into a fair region of smiling meadows, blossoming fruit-trees, orchards, and woodlands, were in those days to be found many pleasant and stately houses, varying in size and splendour according to the condition of the owner, but fair mansions for the most part, and inhabited by persons of quality, many of whom held posts at Court, and found this proximity to Whitehall a matter of no small convenience. Some of the fairest and seemliest of these mansions were those which lay along the river banks, with gardens terraced to the water’s edge, where light wherries could deposit gay gallants at the foot of the steps leading to the wide gravelled walks, and where a gay panorama of shipping could be seen by those who paced the shady walks, or sat in the little temples and bowers which made a feature of so many of these gardens. There was one house in particular that in these days had a notoriety of its own. It had been an old manor house in the time when London had not extended so far to the west, and it lay embosomed in a quaint old garden, where fair and tall trees made a pleasant shade through the hot summer days, where the turf was emerald green and soft to the foot, and roses flourished in wild abundance. Now there was a formal Dutch garden set in the midst of the old-time wilderness, where clipped box edges divided the parterres of brilliant-hued blossoms sent from Holland, and where nymphs disported themselves around marble fountains, and heathen divinities on pedestals kept watch and ward over the long terraces which lined the margin of the river. But in spite of these innovations of modern taste, the silvan charm of the old garden had by no means been destroyed, and there were many who declared that not even Hampton Court itself could hold a candle to Lord Romaine’s riverside garden for beauty and brightness and the nameless fascination which defies analysis. Lord Romaine was accounted a rising man. The friend of Marlborough and Godolphin, a moderate Whig in politics, a courtier above all else, and loyal to the backbone, he had been regarded with favour by the late King, who had given him some appointment about the Court, which had been confirmed by the Queen on her accession. And although Queen Anne was herself of such strong Tory leanings, she was beginning to find that the moderate Whigs were the men most useful and most to be depended upon; and the shrewd Duchess Sarah—her dear "Mrs. Freeman"—herself a convert from high Tory principles to those of their moderate opponents, was using her influence steadily and strongly to bring the Queen round to the same state of mind.