profound an impression her beauty made upon the admittedly
impressionable old Pepys you may study in his diary. He had a
glimpse of her one day riding in the Park with the King, and a
troop of ladies, among whom my Lady Castlemaine, looking, as he
tells us, "mighty out of humour." There was a moment when Miss
Stewart came very near to becoming Queen of England, and although
she never reached that eminence, yet her effigy not only found
its way into the coinage, but abides there to this day (more
perdurable than that of any actual queen) in the figure of
Britannia, for which she was the model.

Charles wooed her openly. It was never his way to study
appearances in these matters. He was so assiduous that it became
customary in that winter of 1666 for those seeking the King at
Whitehall to inquire whether he were above or below--"below"
meaning Miss Stewart's apartments on the ground-floor of the
palace, in which apartments his Majesty was a constant visitor.
And since where the King goes the Court follows, and where the
King smiles there the Court fawns, it resulted that this child
now found herself queering it over a court that flocked to her
apartments. Gallants and ladies came there to flirt and to
gossip, to gamble and to pay homage.

About a great table in her splendid salon, a company of rustling,
iridescent fops in satin and heavy periwigs, and of ladies with
curled head-dresses and bare shoulders, played at basset one
night in January. Conversation rippled, breaking here and there
into laughter, white, jewelled hands reached out for cards, or
for a share of the heaps of gold that swept this way and that
with the varying fortunes of the game.