And now she was seventy-six. To her, if to nobody else in the world, her philosopher brother, twelve years her junior, was still “Robyn”—the “Deare Squire.” There were some empty rooms and many memories in the house in Pall Mall; but the sister and brother were together, and it was a hospitable and pleasant house, and open to many friends. Distinguished strangers from many parts of the world came to pay their respects to Mr. Boyle, the celebrated Sceptical Chymist and Christian _Virtuoso_, and his incomparable sister, the Lady Ranelagh, who for fifty years had lived “on the most public scene,” and “made the greatest figure in all the revolutions of these kingdoms of any woman of that age.”[339] The London _virtuosi_—and there were bishops as well as mathematicians among them—brought their latest literary and scientific gossip to the house in the Mall. The elder brother, old Lord Burlington, was sometimes to be found there, with a conversational statesman or two in tow, who could successfully dodge the politics of the moment by indulging in such a pleasant and safe topic as the _amours_ of Mary, Queen of Scots, with “the Italian favourite.”[340] Gilbert Burnet—that eloquent and happy Scotsman south of the Tweed—sat at Mr. Boyle’s feet and took notes: his bishopric was to come with the accession of William and Mary. Even Pyrophilus must have looked in upon his mother and uncle now and then. Dick’s fortunes were up; he was an important man, had grown fat and very witty, and was building himself a fine house in Chelsea.[341] His mother’s portrait was to hang on the wall of his private closet, looking at him long after she was dead; outliving other loves.[342] Men and women of the younger generation of this great family were living round about Piccadilly, St. James’s, and Pall Mall. One niece especially, my Lady Thanet, a married daughter of Lord and Lady Burlington, was a “greate virtuosa,” known in London Society as one who “used to speak much of her uncle.”[343] And Evelyn, the friend of nearly forty years, though he was a good deal older than Boyle, still found his way from Deptford to Pall Mall to visit the philosopher and his sister. In the afternoons, Boyle was seldom without company; “neither did his severer studys,” says Evelyn, “soure his conversation in the least.” He had “the most facetious and agreeable conversation in the world among the ladys, whenever he happen’d to be engag’d; and yet so very serious, compos’d and contemplative at all other times; tho’ far from moroseness, for indeede he was affable and civil rather to excesse, yet without formality.”[344]