“Moll,” she writes, “is very well, and is a-writing to make you merry; she is bound to you for your sending her a token.” “Mr. Clarke will tell you who she is like; she is so lively and full of play that she will make you very good sport when you come home. I hope you have received her picture, though you have sent me no word whether you have or no.”[246] This picture was painted by Balthazar Gerbier; but, not being completed in time, the artist was obliged to substitute one which had been completed three years previously; “for the little lady,” writes Gerbier, in allusion to this substitution, “she has been painted in great haste; the hands, which crave a blessing from your excellency, are merely outlined.”[247] The “Lady Mary” was still an infant when the Duke returned from Spain; but the remembrance of her father, which had been impressed upon her childish thoughts, is exemplified in the following passage from a letter of her grandfather, the Earl of Rutland.[248] "Your wife, your sister, Mr. Porter, and myself were at supper at York House, when news came Dick Graeme[249] was come; but we were so impatient to see him, that some could eat no meat, and when we did see him and your letter, they were so overjoyed they forgot to eat; nay, my pretty, sweet Moll, as she was undressing, cried nothing but ‘dad, dad.’" Footnote 246: Goodman’s Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 313. Footnote 247: Ibid, p. 264. Footnote 248: Dated April 1st, 1623; Harl. MSS., 1581, p. 129. Footnote 249: One of the Duke’s attendants. This prattling child was now growing into what King James entitled “a fair maid;” and a son, George, afterwards celebrated for his wit and profligacy, had been added to the many blessings showered upon Buckingham by Providence. His wife, who had, during his absence, kept his picture, “as her sweet saint, always within sight of her bed,” was now happy in the presence of one whom she seems to have loved with all the ardour of a first affection. Even the infidelities of her husband, now beginning to be generally known, appear to have left her love unchanged. She knew well the temptations that beset him. “Every one tells me,” she writes at one time, “how happy I am in a husband;” “that you will not look at a woman, and yet how they woo you.” When undeceived, the Duchess had the greatness of mind to make allowances for this flattered child of fortune; she knew that if any man were to be excused, it was he who, in foreign courts, had encountered the snares to which his disposition rendered him too easy a prey. The delinquency, as we have seen, nearly broke her heart; but she forgave and received the delinquent. She appears to have ever retained a conviction that her husband’s heart was true to her, whatever his errors may have been. “Yourself is a jewel that will win the hearts of all the women in the world; but I am confident it is not in their power to win your heart from a heart that is, was, and ever shall be yours till death.”[250]