honeymoon. Within a year--so powerless is anger against love--Charles
summoned the truants back to favour, and the Duchess, as Lady of the
Bedchamber to the Queen, was installed once more at Whitehall, more
splendid and pre-eminent than ever. During her brief exile, she had held
a rival court of her own as near Whitehall as Somerset House, where,
says Pepys,

"she was visited for her beauty's sake by people, as the
Queen is at nights. And they say also she is likely to go
to Court again, and there put my Lady Castlemaine's nose
out of joint. God knows that would make a great turn."

How far the Duke's bride succeeded in putting Lady Castlemaine's "nose
out of joint" must remain a matter of speculation. There seems little
doubt that as a wife she proved more complaisant to Charles than as a
maid. She had carried her virtue unstained to the altar and a Duchess's
coronet, and this seems to have been the main concern of the beautiful
prude. That Charles was more infatuated even with the wife than with the
maid-of-honour is incontestable. He not only made open love to her at
Court, but, especially after he had packed off her husband, the Duke, as
Ambassador to Denmark, his pursuit took a clandestine and more dangerous
shape. Pepys throws a light on what looks like a secret amour, when he
tells us, on the authority of Mr Pierce, that Charles once "did take a
pair of oars or a sculler, and all alone, or but one with him, go to
Somerset House (from Whitehall), and there, the garden-door not open,
himself clamber over the wall to make a visit to the Duchess, which is a
horrid shame."

[Illustration: FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND]