counsellor of a Queen of England, he would have laughed aloud; and yet
Fate had this and more in waiting for Sarah Jennings in the years to
come. The Squire himself professed to be no more than a plain
country-gentleman, who knew as much as any man about horses and the
management of acres, but knew no more of courts and coronets than of the
man in the moon.

His family, it is true, had been seated for generations on its broad
Hertfordshire lands, and his father had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath
when the Prince of Wales, later Charles I., himself received the
accolade. His mother, too, was a Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romney,
a family of old lineage and high respectability; but, apart from Sir
John, no Jennings had ever aspired even as high as a mere knighthood,
and certainly they were as far removed from coronets as from the North
Pole.

Squire Jennings had another daughter, Frances, at this time a winsome
little maid of eight summers, already showing promise of a rare
loveliness. And she, too, was destined to a career, almost as brilliant
as, and more adventurous than that of her baby-sister. Her story opened
when one day she was transported, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of
York, from the modest home in Hertfordshire to the glamour and
splendours of the Royal Court, where her beauty dazzled all eyes.

The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her, and turned on
her the battery of his sighs and smiles, his ogling and flattering
speeches. When she met his advances with coldness, he bombarded her with
notes "containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent
promises," slipping them into her pocket or muff, as opportunity served;
but the disdainful beauty dropped the _billets-doux_ on the floor for