“Only with double panelling, my lady, and the woodwork has shrunk a little. I happened to notice it last night when I went in there in the dark to get a blanket, and Mistress Barbara’s candle was burning.”
The eyes of the two women met in the looking-glass. Mrs. Jael’s face gave forth a sunny, insinuating smile.
“It is not my nature, my lady, to spy and shuffle, but—”
“If you scraped a little of the wood away with a knife?”
“I don’t feel happy about Mistress Barbara, my lady. And if—”
“Be careful, Jael, you are pulling my hair.”
“If you should see anything strange, it is well that I should know.”
If the divine Hortense ruled his Majesty the King that year, her sway spread itself over the majority of those ambitious gentlemen who were in quest of “place” and plunder. When women exploited the state, and burst the bubble of a reputation with a kiss, politicians baited their interests with some new “beauty,” and pinned their petitions to the flounce of a petticoat.
Castlemaine had faded into France; Portsmouth watched from behind a cloud; even the irrepressible Nell had prophesied the splendor of the Mancini’s conquest. Hortense had landed at Torbay, and, like the exquisite romanticist that she was, had ridden up to London in man’s attire with seven servants, a maid, and a black boy in attendance. What was of more significance, she had ridden at a canter into the august heart of Whitehall. The palace of St. James had held her for a season, till the Duke of York, with commendable brotherly discretion, had purchased Lord Windsor’s house for her in the park, that such a brilliant might shine upon them from a fitting setting.
There was a fascination in the fact that Cardinal Mazarin should have possessed such a sheaf of adventurous nieces. They were all beautiful, all romantically rebellious, all deliciously feminine. It was impossible not to fall in love with them, and often impossible not to forget the intoxication, for none of the Cardinal’s kinswomen were mere sentimental fools. As for Hortense, she was a woman for whom a man might gamble away his soul, simply because she looked at him with those black, roguish, yet shrewd eyes of hers and made him feel that she was a desire beyond his reach.