“No, child; I had seen many handsome women before I met your mother. She came over in ’35 with the Marquise, who had been lady of honour to Queen Marie before the Princess Henriette married our King, and Queen Henriette was fond of her, and invited her to come to London, and she divided her life between the two countries till the troubles, when she was one of the first to scamper off, as you know. My wife was little more than a child when I saw her at Court, hiding behind her mother’s large sleeves. I had seen handsomer women; but she was the first whose face went straight to my heart. And it has dwelt there ever since,” he concluded, with a sudden break in his voice. “Then you can comprehend, dear sir, that a man may be honourable, and courteous, and handsome, and yet not win a woman’s love.” “Ah, it is not the man; it is love that should win, sweetheart. Love is worthy of love. When that is the true coin it should buy its reward. Indeed I have rarely seen it otherwise. Love begets love. Louise de la Vallière is not the handsomest woman at the French Court. Her complexion has suffered from small-pox, and she has a defective gait; but the King discovered a so fond and romantic attachment to his person, a love ashamed of loving, the very poetry of affection; and that discovery made him her slave. The Court beauties—sultanas splendid as Vashti—look on in angry wonder. Louise is adored because she began by adoring. Mind, I do not praise or excuse her, for ’tis a mortal sin to love a married man, and steal him from his wife. Foolish child, how your cheek crimsons! I do wrong to shock your innocence with my babble of a King’s mistress.” Denzil arrived at sunset, on horseback, with a mounted servant in attendance, carrying his saddle-bags and fishing tackle. It was but a short day’s ride from Oxford. Fareham’s rides with the hounds must have brought him sometimes within a few miles of the Manor Moat Hyacinth and her children might have ridden over in their coach; and indeed she had promised her sister a visit in more than one of her letters. But there had been always something to postpone the expedition—company at home, or bad weather, or a fit of the vapours—so that the sisters had been as much asunder as if the elder had been in Yorkshire or Northumberland.