Dick, “my Lord Dungarvan,” on the other hand, had been proving himself a very satisfactory son: not very clever, perhaps, but eminently good-natured and sensible. He had acquitted himself admirably in England, writing comfortable letters to his father, who was much gratified to hear that his boy had taken part in the Royal Masque. It must have been the great Royal Masque in Whitehall, on Shrove Tuesday night, February 18th, 1634: the _Cælum Britannicum_, which followed on the still greater Masque of the Inns of Court. The words were by the poet Carew, the music by Henry Lawes, who had set Milton’s _Comus_; and the scenery was by Inigo Jones. The King himself and fourteen of his chief nobles were the Masquers, and the juvenile parts were taken by ten young lords and noblemen’s sons. No wonder that the old Earl was proud of “Dick”. And Dungarvan had made such good progress with his wooing that in July a pretty little letter, neatly wax-sealed on floss-silk, had come to the Earl of Cork, beginning: “My Lord,—Now I have the honour to be your daughter.” In September 1634 the indefatigable _Ninth Whelp_ brought Dungarvan and his bride to Ireland. The Earl met them at their landing, and drove them back in triumph—three coaches full—to his town house in Dublin. All the available members of the family, little Robert Boyle included, were gathered to welcome the new sister-in-law. It was a great alliance, in which Wentworth himself, by marriage a kinsman of the Cliffords, had lent a hand. For the time being, it was to draw the Lord Deputy into the circle of the Earl’s family, though the personal relations between the Deputy and the Earl were to become even more strained. CHAPTER III SCHOOLDAYS AT ETON “Where the Provost at that time was Sir Henry Wotton, a person that was not only a fine gentleman himself, but very well skilled in the art of making others so.”—ROBERT BOYLE’S _Philaretus_.