In his golden periwig he looked at this date not a year more than thirty, despite the hard life he had lived from boyhood. As yet he had come to none of that grossness to be observed in the portrait which Sir Peter Lely painted some years later. He was still the handsomest man at Charles’s Court, with his long-shaped, dark blue eyes under very level brows, his fine nose and chin, and his humorous, sensitive, sensual mouth. In shape and carriage he was of an extraordinary grace that drew all eyes upon him. Yet at sight, instinctively, Miss Farquharson disliked him. She apprehended under all that beauty of person something sinister. She shrank inwardly and coloured a little under the appraising glance of those bold, handsome eyes, which seemed to penetrate too far. Reason and ambition argued her out of that instinctive shrinking. Here was one whose approval carried weight and would set the seal upon her fame, one whose good graces could maintain her firmly on the eminence to which she had so laboriously climbed. He was a man whom, in spite of all instinctive warnings, she must use with consideration and a reasonable submission. On his side, the Duke, already captivated by her grace and beauty upon the stage, found himself lost in admiration now that at close quarters he beheld her slim loveliness. For lovely she was, and the blush which his scrutiny had drawn to her cheeks, heightening that loveliness, almost disposed him to believe Etheredge’s incredible assertion of her virtue. Shyness may be counterfeited and the simpers of unsophistication are easily assumed; but a genuine blush is not to be commanded. His grace bowed, low, the curls of his wig swinging forward like the ears of a water-spaniel. “Madam,” he said, “I would congratulate you were I not more concerned to congratulate myself for having witnessed your performance, and still more Lord Orrery, your present author. Him I not only congratulate but envy--a hideous, cankering emotion, which I shall not conquer until I have written you a part at least as great as his Katherine. You smile?” “It is for gratification at your grace’s promise.” “I wonder now,” said he, his eyes narrowing, his lips smiling a little. “I wonder is that the truth, or is it that you think I boasted? that such an achievement is not within my compass? I’ll confess frankly that until I saw you it was not. But you have made it so, my dear.” “If I have done that, I shall, indeed, have deserved well of my audience,” she answered, but lightly, laughing a little, as if to discount the high-flown compliment. “As well, I trust, as I shall have deserved of you,” said he. “The author must always deserve the best of his puppets.” “Deserve, aye. But how rarely does he get his deserts!” “Surely you, Bucks, have little reason to complain,” gibed Etheredge. “In my case, now, it is entirely different.”