Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/93

Rh Cleveland, he loved "on the score of the sea," and for the frankness of his nature. His queen's manners and society he never could have liked, though his letter to Lord Clarendon, written from Portsmouth, upon her first arrival, is ardent in passion, and might have been held to promise the most constant affection for her person. He grew at last to believe that she never could bring him an heir, an opinion in which he was confirmed by the people about him; but, anxious as he certainly was for another wife, he rejected with scorn a proposition that was made to him to send her away in disguise to a distant region. His steadiness to his brother, though it may and indeed must in a great measure be accounted for on selfish principles, had at least, as Fox remarks, a strong resemblance to virtue. Prince Rupert he looked upon, not unjustly, as a madman. If he was slow to reward and willing to forgive, he was not prone to forget. His secret service expenses record many payments, and at all periods, to the several branches of the Penderells, to whom he was indebted for his preservation after the battle of Worcester.