Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/84

68 time,— that he had been made a groom of the King's bed-chamber, with a pension of a thousand pounds a-year, commencing from Michaelmas, 1668; that he had received the promise of a peerage at his grandfather's death; and that he had been sent by the King on a complimentary visit to a foreign power, or, as Dryden is said to have called it, on a "sleeveless errand" into France. In the meantime gossips in both the theatres were utterly at a loss to reconcile the stories repeated by the orange-women that Nelly was often at Whitehall with her constant attention to her theatrical engagements, and the increasing skill she exhibited in the acquirements of her art. Nor was it till the winter of 1669, or rather the spring of 1670, that the fact of the postponement of a new tragedy by Dryden, on account of Nelly's being away, confirmed some of the previous rumours; and it was known even east of Temple Bar, and among the Puritans in the Blackfriars, that Nelly had become the mistress of the King.

When this important change in her condition took place—a change that removed her from many temptations, and led to the exhibition of traits of character and good feeling which more than account for the fascination connected with her name—she