The Touchstone of Fortune Being the Memoir of Baron Clyde, Who Lived, Thrived, and Fell in the Doleful Reign of the So-called Merry Monarch, Charles II

One morning, a week or more after my visit to my uncle's house, with Frances, she came to my closet in the Wardrobe greatly excited, and told me that a sheriff had come to take...

We found Lilly at home, eager to help us. He asked many questions relating to my cousin's life and her friends at court, to all of which I made full answer in so far as I knew,...

Whatever faults Whitehall may have had as a place of residence, dulness was not among them. There were balls, games with high stakes, theatres, gossip, scandals, and once in a l...

"As you justly observed, Baron Ned," my uncle began, restraining his emotion as best he could, "sooner or later my daughters will have to face the world alone. I am of no help t...

mine, but more, I had wronged him grievously, and it was right that I should make what poor amends I could. But right or wrong, I did what I had to do, and I do not intend to bl...

George went to the Shield Gallery in Whitehall at ten o'clock the next morning, where he found his Majesty, the Lord Chancellor, and a half score of the king's creatures, includ...

Betty was confined to her room during the greater part of the next month, and Frances visited her frequently. Notwithstanding my vows not to see Betty, I was compelled to go wit...

There is an infernal charm about sin which should have been given to virtue, but unluckily got shifted in very early human days. And so it was that George Hamilton had troubles...

When we knocked at Hamilton's door, he answered, "Come," and I entered, Betty closing the door behind me, leaving George and me together. He was lying on the bed, his head and a...

On the way down to the Bridge, inquisitive, irresistible Nelly drew out of Frances a meagre statement of her case. Although Nelly could not write her own name, she was excellent...

Goddess Fortune seems to delight in smiling on a man who risks his all, including life, perhaps, on a desperate chance of, say one to one hundred. If her Ladyship frowns and he...

In the evening the duchess gave a little ball in her parlor to present Frances to the king and to the queen, if her Majesty should attend, to the Duke of York, and to others liv...

Four or five days after our visit to Bettina, I met De Grammont at Charing Cross, and he surprised me with an invitation to his house that night to meet Monsieur l'Abbé du Boise...

We landed at the Old Swan stairs below the Bridge on Lower Thames Street, and went to the end of the Bridge, where De Grammont waited till I had taken Bettina home.

When Frances came downstairs, she and I started home, walking first down Gracious Street, and then through Upper Thames Street toward Temple Bar. It was no time to scold her, si...