“The King is worn out with the journey,” went on Roger. “All that bowing and smiling…. It must be wearying.”

Barbara still said nothing. All the bowing and smiling! she thought. Tired he might be, but he would be content. To think it had come at last. To think he was here in London!

But she was afraid. When she had last seen him he had been a King in exile, a very hopeful King it was true, but still an exile. Now that he had come into his own, her rivals would not be merely a few women at an exiled Court; they would be all the beauties of England. Moreover he himself would be a man courted and flattered by all…. It might well be that the man with whom she had to deal would be less malleable than that King who, briefly, had been her lover when she had gone with Roger to Holland.

That was but a few months ago, when Roger had been commissioned to carry money to the King who was then planning his restoration to the throne.

Charles had looked at Barbara and had been immediately attracted by those flamboyant charms.

Barbara too had been attracted—not only by his rank but by his personal charm. She had been sweetly subdued and loving during those two or three nights in Holland; she had kept that fierce passion for power in check; she had concealed it so successfully that it had appeared in the guise of a passion for the man. Yet he was no fool, that tall lean man; he was well versed in the ways of such as Barbara; and because he would never rave and rant at a woman, that did not mean that he did not understand her. Barbara was a little apprehensive of his tender cynical smile.

She had said: “Tomorrow I shall have to leave for England with my husband.”

“Ere long,” he had answered, “I shall be recalled to London. My people have been persuaded to clamor for my return, just as eleven years ago they were taught to demand my father’s head. Ere long I too shall be in England.”

“Then … sire, we shall both be there.”

“Aye … we shall both be there….”

And that was all; it was characteristic of him.

She was faintly alarmed concerning the changes she might find in him; but when she held up her mirror, patted the “favorites” which nestled on her brow, smiled at her animated and beautiful face, she was confident that she would succeed.

Roger, watching her, understood her thoughts. He said: “I know what happened between you and the King in Holland.”

She laughed at him. “I pray you do not think to play the outraged husband with me, sir!”

“Play the part! I have no need to play it, Barbara,” said the little man sadly. “If you think to fool me with others as you did with Chesterfield …”

“Now that the King is returned it might be called treason to refer to his Majesty as ‘others.’ You are a fool, Roger. Are you so rich, is your rank so high that you can afford to ignore the advantages I might bring you?”

“I do not like the manner in which you would bring me these advantages. Am I a complacent fool? Am I a husband to stand aside and smile with pleasure at his wife’s wanton behavior? Am I? Am I?”

Barbara spun round on him and cried: “Yes…. Yes, you are!”

“You must despise me. Why did you marry me?”

Barbara laughed aloud. “Because mayhap I see virtues where others see faults. Mayhap I married you because you are … what you are. Now I pray you do not be a fool. Do not disappoint me. Do not tell me I have made a mistake in the man I married, and I promise you that you shall not come badly out of your union with me.”

“Barbara, sometimes you frighten me.”

“I am not surprised. You are a man who is easily frightened…. Yes, woman?” shouted Barbara, for one of her women had appeared at the door.”

Madam, the King wishes to see you.”

Barbara gave a loud laugh of triumph. She had nothing to fear. He was the same man who had found her irresistible during that brief stay in Holland. The King was commanding that she be brought to his presence.

She took one last look at herself in her mirror, assured herself of her startling beauty and swept out of her apartment to the presence of the King.

Barbara had learned what she wanted at a very early age, and with that knowledge had come the determination to get it.

She never knew her father, for that noble and loyal gentleman had died before she was two years old; but when she was a little older her mother had talked to her of him, telling her how he had met his death at the siege of Bristol for the sake of the King’s cause, and that she, his only child, must never forget that she was a member of the noble family of Villiers and not do anything to stain the honor of that great name.

At that time Barbara was a vivacious little girl and, because she was a very pretty one, she was accustomed to hearing people comment on her lovely appearance. She was fascinated by the stories of her father’s heroism and she determined that when she grew up she would be as heroic as he was. She promised herself that she would perform deeds of startling bravery; she would astonish all with her cleverness; she would become a Joan of Arc to lead the Royalists to victory. She was a fervent Royalist because her father had been. She thought of Cromwell and Fairfax as monsters, Charles, the King, as a saint. Even when she was but four years old her little face would grow scarlet with rage when anyone mentioned Cromwell’s name.

“Curb that temper of yours, Barbara,” her mother often said. “Control it. Never let it control you.”

Sometimes her relatives would visit her mother—those two dashing boys of another branch of the family, George and Francis Villiers. They teased her a good deal, which never failed to infuriate her so that she would forget the injunctions to curb her temper and fly at them, biting and scratching, using all the strength she possessed to fight them; this naturally only amused them and made them intensify their teasing.

George, the elder of the boys, had been the Duke of Buckingham since his father had died. He was more infuriating than his brother Lord Francis, and it became his special delight to see how fierce she could become. He told her she would die a spinster, because no man would marry such a termagant as she would undoubtedly become; he doubted not that she would spend her life in a convent, where they would have a padded cell into which she could be locked until she recovered from her rages.

Those boys gave her plenty of practice in control. Often she would hide from them because she was determined not to show her anger, but she soon discovered that, she enjoyed her passions and, oddly enough, the company of her young relatives.

When Barbara was seven her mother married again and Barbara’s stepfather was her father’s cousin, Charles Villiers, Earl of Anglesey.

The marriage startled Barbara because, having always heard her father spoken of with reverence, it seemed strange that her mother could so far forget his perfections as to take another husband. Barbara’s blue eyes were alert; she had always felt a great interest in the secret ways of adults. Now she remembered that her stepfather had for some time been a frequent visitor, and that he had seemed on each occasion always very affectionate towards her mother. She reasoned that her, father, whom she had thought to be perfect, must after all have been merely foolish. He had become involved in the war and had met his death. The King’s Cause had gained little by his sacrifice; and his reward was a tomb and the title of hero, while his cousin’s was marriage with the widow.

Barbara told herself sagely that she would not have been as foolish as her father. When her time came she would know how to get what she wanted and live to enjoy it.

The result of this marriage was a move to London, and Barbara was enchanted by London as soon as she set eyes on it. It was Puritan London, she heard, and not to be compared with merry laughter-laden London of the old days; but still it was London. She would ride through Hyde Park with her mother or her governess in their carriage, and she would look wistfully at the gallery at the Royal Exchange, which was full of stalls displaying silks and fans; she would notice the rendezvous of young men and women in the Mulberry Garden. “London’s a dull place,” she often heard it said, “compared with the old city. Why, then there was dancing and revelry in the streets. A woman was not safe out after dark—not that she is now—but the King’s Cavaliers had a dash about them that the Puritans lack.”

She was eager for knowledge of the world; she longed for fine clothes; she hated the dowdy garments she was forced to wear; she wished to grow up quickly that she might take her part in the exciting merry-go-round of life.

The servants were afraid of her, and she found it easy to get what she wanted from them. She could kick and scream, bite and scratch in a manner which terrified them.

Occasionally she saw George and Francis. George was haughty and had no time for little girls. Francis was gentler and told her stories of the royal household in which he and his brother had spent their childhood, because King Charles had loved their father dearly and when he had been killed in the Royalist Cause had taken the little Villiers boys into his household to be brought up with the little Princes and Princess. Francis told Barbara of Charles, the King’s eldest son, the most easygoing boy he had ever known; and he talked of Mary who had been married to the Prince of Orange, after she was almost blind with weeping and hoarse with begging her parents not to send her away from Whitehall; he told her of young James, who had wanted to join in their games, and from whom they had all run away because he was too young. She liked to hear of the games which had been played in the avenues and alleys of Hampton Court. Her eyes would glisten and she would declare that she wished she had been born a man, that she might be a king.