“’Sdeath!” muttered Nell to herself, hotly, as, with quite a knightly bearing, she approached the Duchess. “He kisses her before my very eyes! He kisses her! I’ll kill the minx!” She half unsheathed her blade. “Pshaw! No! No! I am too gallant to kill the sex. I’ll do the very manly act and simply break her heart. Aye, that is true bravery in breeches.”
Her manner changed.
“Your grace!” she said suavely.
“Yes,” answered Portsmouth, her eyes still gleaming triumphantly.
“It seems you are partial of your favours?”
“Yes.”
“Such a gift from lips less fair,” continued Nell, all in wooing vein, “would make a beggar royal.”
The hostess was touched with the phrasing of the compliment. She smiled.
“You would be pleased to think me fair?” she coyly asked, with the air of one convinced that it could not well be otherwise.
“Fairer than yon false gallant thinks you,” cried Nell, with an angry toss of the head in the direction of the departed King. “Charles’s kiss upon her lips?” she thought. “’Tis mine, and I will have it.”