"I am sure, my lady, I can't tell; but my mistress is very wise, and if she wished me to know any thing of such like, would direct me herself. Shall I put any of this ambergris in your ladyship's hair, or do you better like the musk-rose?"--How perplexing to the cunning is straightforward simplicity! "Now," thought Lady Frances, "one of the court waiting-maids would have comprehended my meaning in a moment; and this wench, with ten times their zeal and real sense, thinks it downright wicked to pry into her lady's secrets. I wonder my women have not taught her the court fashions.--You may go to bed, Barbara; light my night lamp, and give me a book; I do not feel at all sleepy." Barbara, with great _naïveté_, presented to Lady Frances a small Bible that lay on the dressing-table:--something resembling a smile passed over the lady's face as she took the volume, but she only observed, "Give me also that book with the golden clasps; I would fain peruse my cousin Waller's last hymn.--What an utterly useless thing is that which is called simplicity!" she said, half aloud, as Barbara closed the door. "And yet I would sooner trust my life in the hands of that country damsel, than with the fine ones, who, though arrayed in plain gowns, flatter corrupt fancies at Whitehall or Hampton!" CHAPTER V. By holy Mary! Butts, there's knavery. SHAKSPEARE. Having consigned the Lady Frances Cromwell to her perfumed couch, and the companionship of Waller's sweet and sonorous strains, we leave her to determine whether the high and mighty Lady Dorothea Sidney, the Poet's Saccharissa, or the gentle Lady Sophia Murray, the beauteous Amoret of his idolatry, were most worthy the affection he so generously bestowed on both. Waller, the most specious flatterer of flattering courts--the early worshipper of Charles the First--the pusillanimous betrayer of his friends--the adulator of Cromwell--the wit and the jester of the second Charles--the devotional whiner of the bigot James--had not, however, sufficient power to keep the lady from her slumbers long. She was soon in the refreshing sleep, known only to the light-hearted.