Apart, over by the fire, in a great chair of gilt leather, lounged the King, languidly observing this smaller party, a faint, indolent smile on his swarthy, saturnine countenance. Absently, with one hand he stroked a little spaniel that was curled in his lap. A black boy in a gorgeous, plumed turban and a long, crimson surcoat arabesqued in gold—there were three or four such attendants about the room—proffered him a cup of posset on a golden salver. The King rose, thrust aside the little blackamoor, and with his spaniel under his arm, sauntered across to Miss Stewart’s table. Soon he found himself alone with her—the others having removed themselves on his approach, as jackals fall back before the coming of the lion. The last to go, and with signs of obvious reluctance, was his Grace of Richmond, a delicately-built, uncomely, but very glittering gentleman. Charles faced her across the table, the tall house of cards standing between them. Miss invited his Majesty’s admiration for my Lord of Buckingham’s architecture. Pouf! His Majesty blew, and the edifice rustled down to a mere heap of cards again. “Symbol of kingly power,” said Miss, pertly. “You demolish better than you build, sire.” “Oddsfish! If you challenge me, it were easy to prove you wrong,” quoth he. “Pray do. The cards are here.” “Cards! Pooh! Card castles are well enough for Buckingham. But such is not the castle I’ll build you if you command me.” “I command the King’s Majesty? Mon Dieu! But it would be treason surely.” “Not greater treason than to have enslaved me.” His fine eyes were oddly ardent. “Shall I build you this castle, child?” Miss looked at him, and looked away. Her eyelids fluttered distractingly. She fetched a sigh. “The castle that your Majesty would build for any but your Queen must prove a prison.” She rose, and, looking across the room, she met the handsome, scowling eyes of the neglected favourite. “My Lady Castlemaine looks as if she feared that fortune were not favouring her.” She was so artless that Charles could not be sure there was a double meaning to her speech. “Shall we go see how she is faring?” she added, with a disregard for etiquette, whose artlessness he also doubted. He yielded, of course. That was his way with beauty, especially with beauty not yet reduced into possession. But the characteristic urbanity with which he sauntered beside her across the room was no more than a mask upon his chagrin. It was always thus that pretty Frances Stewart used him. She always knew how to elude him and, always with that cursed air of artlessness, uttered seemingly simple sentences that clung to his mind to tantalize him. “The castle your Majesty would build for any but your Queen must prove a prison.” What had she meant by that? Must he take her to queen before she would allow him to build a castle for her?