"
"Be assured I am altogether human--at least upon the worser side of
humanity."
"How dismal you look! Upon my soul, Fareham, you should fight against that
melancholic habit. Her ladyship is in the black sulks. We are in for
a pleasant evening. Yet, if we were to go away, she would storm at us
to-morrow; call us sycophants and time-servers, swear she would hold no
further commerce with any manjack among our detestable crew. Well, she is
a magnificent termagant. If Cleopatra was half as handsome, I can forgive
Antony for following her to ruin at Actium."
"There is supper in the music-room, gentlemen," said Lady Castlemaine, who
was standing near the fire in the midst of a knot of whispering women.
They had been abusing the fair Frances, and ridiculing old Rowley, to
gratify their hostess. She knew them by heart--their falsehood and
hollowness. She knew that they were ready, every one of them, to steal her
royal lover, had they but the chance of such a conquest; yet it solaced her
soreness to hear Miss Stewart depreciated even by those false lips--"She
was too tall." "Her Britannia profile looked as if it was cut out of wood."
"She was bold, bad, designing." "It was she who would have the King, not
the King who would have her.
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