Nobody exactly knows who was the noble suitor that was to marry Mary Boyle and be packed off to Geneva like a schoolboy immediately afterwards. For Mary Boyle had once more expressed her “very high averseness and contradicon” to the Earl’s counsels and commands. She had again refused Mr. James Hamilton, though all her brothers and sisters and several of her brothers-in-law, and all her best friends—poor little unruly Mary!—“did entreat and persuade,” and the old Earl “did command.” Vanquished for once, the Earl of Cork had been in treaty with more than one other youthful suitor for Mary’s hand. But Mary Boyle has told her own story.[85] “Living so much at my ease,” she says, “I was unwilling to change my condition.” After Frank’s marriage, his wife Betty lived with the Earl in the House of the Savoy, where she and Mary Boyle became close friends and “chamber fellows.” Betty obtained “a great and ruling power” over Mary, “inticing her to spend” (as she did) “her time in seeing and reading plays and romances, and in exquisite and curious dressing.” Betty Boyle had many of the young gallants of the Court at her beck and call, and one of them was Mr. Charles Rich, second son of the Earl of Warwick. Charles Rich was “a very cheerful and handsome, well-bred and fashioned person, and being good company, was very acceptable to us all, and so became very intimate in our house, visiting us almost every day.” Charles Rich also had been in love with Mrs. Harrison, but not so deeply as to prevent his acting as Mr. Thomas Howard’s second in the duel; and after that for a time he had considered it only civil to absent himself from the House of the Savoy. When he did come again it was to transfer his attentions to the Lady Mary; and Frank’s wife played go-between. “A most diligent gallant to me,” says Mary of Charles Rich, many long years after their forbidden love-making and runaway marriage; “applying himself, when there were no other beholders in the room but my sister, to me; but if any other person came in he took no more than ordinary notice of me.” And every night when Mary laid her little unruly head upon the pillow she resolved that Charles Rich must be given his dismissal, and that Betty must be told never again to mention him to her as a husband. And somehow every morning it seemed impossible to carry out her resolution; and she made her toilet, and put on her most exquisite and curious dress, and looked the proud and charming little lady that she was. But Marcombes and the boys in Geneva knew nothing of all this; and for that matter neither as yet did the old Earl. The noble suitor about whom he was in treaty when he wrote to Geneva was certainly not Charles Rich—who was only a second son, “with £1300 or £1400 a year at the most”; and who, if he dared to pay his court to the Earl of Cork’s youngest daughter, must do it clandestinely with the connivance of Betty Boyle.