Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/80

64 left his court in secret a few months before, and worse still had given herself in marriage to the Duke of Richmond, without his approbation, and even without his knowledge. Castlemaine was now past her zenith, though she retained much beauty to the last, and found admirers in the great Duke of Marlborough, when young, and in Beau Fielding, long the handsomest man about town. Yet Charles was not really unkind to her at any time. The song which he caused Will Legge to sing to her—

must have caused her some temporary uneasiness and a disdainful curl of her handsome and imperious lip; but she knew her influence and managed to retain it almost unimpaired to the very last, in spite of many excesses, which Buckingham seldom failed to discover and make known to the King.

Of the King, the Countess, and pretty Miss Davis, at this period, Pepys affords us a sketch in little—but to the point:—