Among the many fair and frail women who fed the flames of the "Merrie
Monarch's" passion from the first day of his restoration to that last
day, but one short week before his death, when Evelyn saw him "sitting
and toying with his concubines," there was, it is said, only one of them
all who really captured his royal and wayward heart, that loveliest,
simplest, and most designing of prudes, _La belle Stuart_.

When Barbara Villiers was enslaving Charles by her opulent charms, the
queen of his many mistresses, Frances Stuart was growing to beautiful
girlhood, an exile at the French Court, with no dream or care of her
future conquest of a king. Her father, a son of Lord Blantyre, had
carried his death-dealing sword through many a fight for the first
Charles, a distant kinsman of his own; and, when the Stuart sun set in
blood, had made good his escape to the friendly shores of France, where
he had found a fresh field for his valour.

Meanwhile his daughter was happy in the charge of the widowed Queen
Henrietta Maria, who although, as Cardinal de Retz tells us, she
frequently "lacked a faggot to leave her bed in the Louvre," and even a
crust to stay the pangs of hunger, proved a tender foster-mother to
brave Walter Stuart's child, and watched her growth to beauty with a
mother's pride.

Even before she emerged from short frocks, Frances Stuart had
established herself as the pet _par excellence_ of the Court of France.
With Anne of Austria the little Scottish maiden was a prime favourite;
every gallant, from "Monsieur" to the rakish Comte de Guise, loved to
romp with her, and to join in her peals of childish laughter; and the
King himself, Louis XIV., stole many a kiss, and was proud to be called
her "big sweetheart." So devoted was His Majesty to _La belle Ecossaise_