And then, not quite a year from the day she had eloped, Frances became seriously ill. At first the doctors thought it might be pregnancy or an ague or a severe attack of the vapours —but after a few days they knew for certain that it was small-pox. Immediately Dr. Fraser sent a note to the King. The resentment Charles had felt against her, his cynical conviction that she had deliberately played him for a fool, vanished in a flood of horror and pity.

Small-pox! Her beauty might be ruined! He thought of that even before he thought of the threat to her life—for it seemed to him that such beauty as Frances had was a thing almost sacred, and should be inviolable to the touch of God or man. To mar or destroy it would be vandalism, in his eyes almost a blasphemy. And she still meant more to him than he had been willing to admit these past months, for she had a kind of freshness and purity which he did not discover in many women he knew and which appealed strongly to the disillusion of his tired and bitter heart.

He would have gone immediately to visit her but the doctors advised against it for fear he might carry the infection and spread it to others. He wrote instead. But though he tried to make his letter sound confident and unworried it had a false flat sound to him, for he did not believe it himself. He had scant faith left in anything, certainly not in the duty of God to preserve a woman’s beauty for men’s eyes. He had found God a negligent debtor who cared little to keep His accounts straight. But he sent her his own best physicians and pestered them constantly for news of her.

How was she feeling? Was she better today? Good! Was she cheerful? And—would she be marred? They always told him what he wanted to hear, but he knew when they were lying.

It was the end of the first week in May—more than a month later—before they would let him see her. And then when his coach rolled into the courtyard of Somerset House he found it jammed full with a score or more of others. Evidently word had spread that he was coming, and they had wanted to be there to see the meeting between them. Charles muttered a curse beneath his breath and his face turned hard and sombre.

Damn them all for their ghoulish curiosity, their cheap petty minds and malignant poking into the sorrows of others.

He got out of his coach and went inside. Mrs. Stewart, Frances’s mother, had been expecting him. He saw at a glance that she was nervous and excited, close to tears, and he knew then for certain that the doctors had been lying to him.

“Oh, your Majesty! I’m so glad you’ve come! She’s been longing to see you! Believe me, Sire, she’s never forgiven herself for that wretched trick she played on you!”

“How is she?”

“Oh, she’s much better! Very much better! She’s dressed and sitting up—though she’s weak yet, of course.”

Charles stood looking down at her, his black eyes reading what was behind her odd fluttering gestures, her quick breathless way of speaking, the anguish in her eyes and the new lines beneath them.

“May I see her now?”

“Oh, yes, your Majesty! Please come with me.”

“From the look of the courtyard, I’d say I’m not the only visitor she has today.”

Mrs. Stewart was mounting the stairs beside him. “It’s the first day she’s been allowed visitors, you see. The room’s quite full—all the town’s in there.”

“Then I think I’ll step into this anteroom until they leave.”

She went to send them away with the plea that Frances had had excitement enough for one day. Charles stood behind the closed door listening to them troop by, chattering and giggling with irresponsible malice. When at last they were gone Mrs. Stewart came for him. They walked down the gallery and into Frances’s own apartments, then through several more rooms until finally they reached the bedchamber where she sat waiting.

She half lay on a couch that faced the door and she was wearing a lovely silken gown which hung in folds to the floor. The draperies had been pulled across all windows to darken the room —it was only two o’clock—and though several candles burned all of them were placed at a distance from her. Charles swept off his hat and bowed, then immediately crossed the room to stand before her. He bowed again, deeply, and reluctantly he raised his eyes to look at her. What he saw sickened him.

She had changed. Oh, even in this dim light she had changed. The disease had spared her nothing. There were ugly red splotches and deep pock-marks on the skin that had been smooth and white as a water-lily, and one eye was partly closed. All that pure and perfect beauty was gone. But it was the misery in Frances’s own upraised begging eyes that struck him hardest.

Mrs. Stewart was still in the room—for Charles had asked her to stay—and she stood with her hands clasped before her, anxious and worried as she watched them. But Charles and Frances had forgotten she was there.

“My dear,” he said softly, forcing himself to speak after too long a silence. “Thank God you’re well again.”

Frances stared at him, struggling for self-control but afraid to trust her voice. At last she managed a pitiful little smile, but the corners of her mouth began to quiver. “Yes, your Majesty. I’m well again.” Her soft low voice dropped to a mere whisper. “If it’s anything to be grateful for.”

There was a sudden bitter twist of her mouth, her eyes went down and she looked quickly away. All at once she covered her face with her hands and began to cry, shoulders and body shaken with the violence of her sobs. It was, he knew, not only the agony of having him see what had happened to her, but the culmination of all she had endured this afternoon—the curious cruel spiteful eyes of the men and women who had been there, all elaborately polite, sympathetic, falsely cheerful. They had taken their revenge on her for every moment of grudging admiration she had ever had, for each fawning compliment, each hypocritical friendship.

Instantly Charles dropped to one knee beside her. His hand touched her arm lightly, the deep tones of his voice began to plead with her. “I’ve been so worried for you, Frances! Oh, my dear—forgive me for acting like a jealous fool!”

“Forgive you? Oh, Sire!” She looked at him, her hands still covering all her face but her eyes, as though she could hide from him behind them. “It’s I who must ask your forgiveness! That’s why this happened to me—I know it is!—to punish me for what I did to you!”

A wave of almost unbearable pity and tenderness swept over him. He felt that he would have given everything he possessed on earth to have her beautiful again, to see her look at him with her old teasing confident coquetry. But it had all gone forever, the sparkling expressions of her face, the happy laughter of a lovely woman who knows that her beauty will buy forgiveness for anything. Savage anger filled him. God in heaven! Does the world spoil everything it touches?

“Don’t talk like that, Frances. Please. I don’t know what made me act like such a fool—But when I heard you were sick I was out of my mind. If anything had happened to you—But thank God you’re well again! I’m not going to lose you.”

She looked at him for a long serious moment, as though wondering whether or not he could see the change in her—pathetically hoping—But it was no use. Of course he could see it. Everyone else had—why shouldn’t he?

“I’m well again, yes,” she murmured. “But I wish I weren’t. I wish I were dead. Look at me—!” Her hands came down, her voice was a lonely cry, anguished and full of desperation; behind them they heard a sudden hard sob from her mother. “Oh, look at me! I’m ugly now!”

He grabbed her hand. “Oh, but you’re not, Frances! This won’t last, I promise you it won’t! Why, you should have seen me after I’d had it. I was enough to frighten the devil himself. But now—look—you can’t see a mark.” He looked up eagerly into her face, smiling, holding both her hands against his heavy beating heart. He felt a passionate longing to help her, to make her believe again in the future, though he did not believe in it himself. And as he talked her eyes began to lighten, something like hope came back into her face. “Why, in no time at all it won’t be possible to tell you’ve ever had the small-pox. You’ll come to the balls and they’ll all say that you’re more beautiful than ever. You’ll be more beautiful than you were that first night I saw you. Remember, darling, that black-and-white lace gown you were wearing, with the diamonds in your hair—”

Frances watched him, fascinated, listening intently. His words had the sound of some old and half-intentionally forgotten melody. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I remember—and you asked me to dance with you—”

“I couldn’t take my eyes off you—I’d never seen such a beautiful woman—”

She smiled at him, passionately grateful for his kindness, but the game was a sorry one and she knew as well as he did that they were only pretending. With all the effort of will she could summon she held back the tears while he sat with her and talked, trying desperately to take her mind off herself. But all her thoughts were wholly of her own tragedy; and Charles, too, could think of nothing else.

Oh, why did it happen to her? he thought, furious with resentment. Why should it have happened to Frances, who had been gay and sweet and friendly, when there were other women who better deserved a fate like that—


But Charles was a stubborn man.

Once, he had said that he hoped someday to find her ugly and willing. He had forgotten the thoughtless words, but he had not forgotten the years of waiting and pleading and promising, the ache of desire, the longing for possession and fulfillment. And now, all at once, it was she who had become the supplicant.