No woman of that time was more brilliant than Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, whose romantic friendship with the great Strafford, which the imagination of a modern poet has immortalized, is only one of her claims to remembrance. A member of the border House of Percy, she incurred, by her marriage with a Scotch nobleman, the serious displeasure of her father, who, as he said, could not bear that his daughter should dance Scotch jigs. But her union with the distinguished Lord Carlisle, whom Henrietta speedily forgave for his share in her early troubles, was to her advantage at Court, where, in virtue of her ten years' seniority over the young Queen, she wielded the influence which often belongs to a married woman, who, though still in the bloom of her beauty, has had time to acquire a knowledge of life. That she was beautiful her portraits remain to testify; that in the mingled arts of coquetry and diplomacy she was so proficient as to challenge comparison with Madame de Chevreuse herself there is ample evidence in the fascination which she exercised, first over Strafford and then over Pym, neither of whom were men to be caught by mediocre ability or charm; that she was cowardly, false, treacherous to her heart's core Henrietta's simple and affectionate nature had as yet no means of discovering.[73] There was another man of less intellectual distinction whom she had once been able to lead captive by her charms, but who had deserted her for a royal mistress across the Channel. The story of her frustrated revenge, though it rests upon the authority of gossiping memoirs,[74] is so characteristic of the lady herself and of others who played a part in Henrietta's life, that it carries with it some degree of conviction, and moreover has an illustrative value apart from its literal truth. Lady Carlisle was not a woman to forgive a faithless lover, even though that lover were the favourite of her King and had left her for the smiles of a foreign Queen. She determined to take a delicate revenge which should punish both the Duke of Buckingham and the Queen of France; and to compass this end she became one of the earliest of the English spies of Richelieu, who would be only too glad to welcome any proof of the levity of Anne of Austria. The Countess laid her plans well. She noticed that Buckingham, after his return from France, was accustomed to wear some diamond studs which she had never seen before, and which she conjectured correctly to have been given to him by the Queen of France. She determined to gain possession of one of these jewels, that she might send it to Richelieu, who would be at no loss to draw his own conclusions. A Court ball gave her an opportunity, and before the evening was out she held in her hand the compromising ornament.