inamorata on the verge of hysterics on a sofa.

One cannot blame the "Merrie Monarch" for deciding that such activities
were better fitted for another field of exercise. The young Lothario was
packed off to Tangier to cool his ardour by a little bloodshed; but
before he went Lady Castlemaine handed him a farewell present of £5,000
with which, according to Lord Chesterfield, "he immediately bought an
annuity of £500 a year of my grandfather Halifax, which was the
foundation of his subsequent fortune."

A young man so enterprising and so gifted by nature could scarcely fail
to go far, when his energies were directed into a suitable channel. He
proved that he could serve under the banner of Mars as gallantly as
under the pennon of Cupid. He did such doughty deeds against the Dutch,
under Monmouth, that he was made a Captain of Grenadiers. At the siege
of Nimeguen his reckless bravery won the unstinted praise of Turenne,
who, when one of his own officers cowardly abandoned an important
outpost, exclaimed, "I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret that my
handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men
that the officer commanded who has lost it." And the "handsome
Englishman" promptly won the supper for the Marshal. Moreover, by an act
of splendid daring, during the siege of Maestricht he saved the Duke of
Monmouth's life; and returned to England a hero and a colonel, having
thoroughly purged his indiscretion in Lady Castlemaine's boudoir. If he
had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had at least saved
the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.

It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah
Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower
as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with