With All My Heart by Margaret Campbell Barnes Page B

join the noisy, modish throng where Barbara queened it among the men she often found herself sitting with the most faithful of her ladies and a mere handful of the dullest courtiers. All the rest seemed to prefer, the loud laughter and lewd jests, and even those who stayed knew that it did them no good to be seen too often at the Queen’s elbow. Barbara would be sure to see that they were covered with ridicule before the evening was out; and because she had a caustic kind of wit Charles, to his shame, would sometimes smile instead of rebuking her. And ridicule, as poor Catherine knew only too well, is the hardest thing of all to face.
    Yet all the more decent men at Court and half the shamed sycophants were tiring of the once amusing contest, and had begun to admire the little, lonely Queen who had learned to behave with dignified restraint and who stood alone, with a courage they secretly envied, for high principles in her personal affairs. And — had she but known it — the King himself was tiring too. All that was best in him was beginning to see her not as the amusing little innocent to be played with, but as a woman of his own to be respected. If Catherine stood out much longer clearly he must choose between the two of them. Though he might smile at his mistress’s malicious sallies and walk out in silence from her tempers, the liberties she took sickened him and he had already had a word with Will Chiffinch — that ingenious jackal of his amours — about some suitable pension for a lady in retirement.
    But the. crumpling of Catherine’s fine resolution was precipitated, quite unwittingly, by a young boy of fourteen or so.
    One evening when Barbara Castlemaine’s behaviour was more preposterous than usual Catherine was touched to see the lad detach himself from a group of baccarat players and take the trouble to talk to some of her neglected ladies.
    “Who is that handsome boy?” she asked.
    “I do not know, Madame,” answered one of her Portuguese ladies. “But I could find out if you wish.”
    Catherine watched him idly for a moment or two, attracted by his grace and carriage, and by something oddly familiar in his gestures. But her lady was saved the trouble, for presently a manservant came across the room and said to him respectfully, “Your pardon, Mr. Crofts, Sir, but Milady Castlemaine would have you come and hold her little dog while she plays a hand.”
    The boy nodded, but was too well mannered to leave Lettice Ormonde abruptly. And Catherine, glancing contemptuously towards the gaming tables, observed that Barbara was leaning familiarly on the King’s arm with most of the other men in the room gathered round her. “She cannot leave me so much as one unbearded boy!” she thought furiously; and, acting on the spur of the moment, beckoned the young fellow to her side. If he were summoned by the Queen even Lady Castlemaine would have to get someone else to hold her pampered spaniel.
    He came with alacrity and a charming smile; and Catherine observed that in spite of his gallant bearing his warm brown hair and eyes gave him an almost womanly beauty. “What is your name?” she asked kindly.
    “Crofts, Madame,” he replied.
    “Your first name, I mean.”
    “Jemmie, my friends call me,” he replied ingenuously.
    “And how is it, Jemmie, that although I have been here fully a month I have never before seen you?”
    Catherine had a way with young people. He pulled forward a cushion and knelt easily and respectfully before her. “Because I have but now come in her Majesty the Queen Mother’s train.”
    “Yet you speak English so dearly that I can understand you more easily than any man I have met — except my husband.”
    “I am an Englishman,” said Jemmie, gratified that she should so ignore his lack of years.
    How pleasant it would.be, thought Catherine, to have an upstanding young boy of one’s own — so natural and so lively — about the Palace. '“But I suppose you live with Queen