A White Face And A Black Mask. By The Author Of "The Buccaneers,"  "The King’s Highway," &c. Reynolds’s  Miscellany. Volume 37, Number 941. Saturday, June 23, 1866.
Chapter III.
The Duchess Of Portsmouth.
And now, leaving the closer quarters of the City of London, with its prisons and Tower, its many churches and dark mansions, we will pass on to a tempting villa, which, standing on the banks of the Thames, the famous and beautiful Duchess of Portsmouth considered quite a sylvan retreat.
Not that the Court beauty’s tastes were at all rural or solitude-seeking : on the contrary, if there was any woman born for intrigue, it was the haughty Duchess.
At the moment Claude Night was persuading Jakes to unlock his prison for a few hours, we will make our acquaintance with Henrietta of Portsmouth, a personage of no small importance in the story which we have undertaken to tell.
She was sitting in a small but handsomely furnished apartment, overlooking the river.
Pictures of rare value hung round the walls; articles that; in those days, were only to be found in palaces and mansions of the richest nobility, were strewn around; and amidst it all, a veritable queen of beauty, sate, or rather stood, the Duchess.
Tall in stature, and of a rather full make, with shoulders and bust liberally displayed by the magnificent crimson satin robe she wore, there was something in her very figure which proclaimed her proud, yet voluptuous nature, without need of the handsome face.
That face, however, was rarely beautiful. The features, though large, were finely cut, and the eyes keen, intense, and exquisitely brilliant; whilst, in contrast with the masses of dark hair, the complexion looked of a lily-like fairness.
It was a face, too, that had the power of assuming an infinite variety of expressions, and like its owner it could be voluptuously melting or haughtily fierce; sweetly simple or wittily satirical.
Unscrupulous to the last degree, Henrietta of Portsmouth had made the most of her beauty  and her cleverness, and when we presented her to our readers she had no reason to be dissatisfied with her success.
She was not alone that morning.
Seated by the window, leisurely sipping some rare burgundy from a massive silver goblet, and paying but very careless attention to  the beautiful Duchess, was a gentleman, who, though past his first youth, deserves a few words of description.
His dress was not strictly in accordance with the fashion of the day, but was chiefly of a dark marone coloured velvet, slashed with silver, whilst near him lay a riding cloak of plain green cloth. He wore his own hair too, which, of the same raven hue of his moustache and beard, gave the olive hue of his complexion a foreign darkness.
"If I dared to trust you, Claverton," said the Duchess, pausing in her walk, and leaning over the carved back of a chair in an attitude that displayed to perfection  her fair, round arms; "but you are like the rest who surround me , who come to make of me but a cat’s-paw to reach the chestnuts, and - and I’ll not be. Hark ye, Claverton ! I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again - I’ll not be !"
"And your fair ladyship will say it a third time, ay, and a fourth, and then - " said her companion lazily twisting his moustache, after carefully wiping his lips with a cambric handkerchief.
"By our Lady, I’ll keep my word !" answered the Duchess firmly.
"Ay, and suppose -"
"Suppose what ?"
The words were simple enough, but they had been uttered by both pairs of lips in a tone which gave them serious meaning.
The dark eyes of the cavalier looked up in the lady’s face with almost a threatening meaning, and for once those Juno-like orbs of the King’s favourite returned the glance uneasily.
"You mean something, Master Claverton, I know well. That Popish plotting brain of yours never leaves your heart too long in constancy; but let your tongue wag freely - I fear you not !"
"And, perchance, Henrietta of Portsmouth thinks she has no need to ?"
"No, she is sure of it  !" but though the Duchess spoke the words so haughtily, she raised herself suddenly from her leaning attitude, and returned to her former occupation of pacing the small closet-like apartment.
Claverton’s eyes followed her with a kind of satisfied admiration. If there was any woman in England he flattered himself he understood thoroughly, and could manage to make his tool, it was Henrietta of Portsmouth. He admired her too.
A silence followed this, and for sometime the lady walked up and down, and the cavalier sipped his Burgundy, and no other sound was to be heard.
It seemed almost a race who could longest preserve the sullen silence, and, for a wonder the lady won.
"By my troth, Henrietta, methinks my visits will have to grow scarce if you receive me only in this way. For our Lady’s sake, leave off that pacing, and come and let us talk a little in our old fashion," said the cavalier.
"I’m not in the humour, Master Claverton, for gossip or love-making ; and as for your visits growing rare, the more they savour of the blessed angels in that respect, the better it will pleasure me !"
The words were bitingly spoken, and accompanied by a superb toss of the haughty head.
They seemed to sting their hearer, and rising with almost a start, he caught up his plumed hat and made a step towards the door.
"Madame, you shall repent this- remember !"
He laid particular stress on the last word, and as he said it, looking with terrible meaning in her face.
"A word at Whitehall - nay, even a word at Somerset House - and not even your past favouritism could save you. and -"
But the Duchess interrupted him. "Past favouritism ! What mean you ?"
"The words I say ! What, fair lady, have not those brilliant eyes been keen enough to see that the fickle monarch turns now from starry night to sunny day ?"
"’Tis false !" exclaimed the Duchess, paling, however, as she turned haughtily away. "your brain is fertile in invention, and you do credit to the Jesuits, your masters, most excellent Claverton; but you cannot dupe me !"
The cavalier passed his thin, delicate hand over the snowy plume of his hat, and stood for an instant meditatively observing the beautiful face before him. Then a sudden change coming over his hitherto sarcastic countenance, he said softly, "Henrietta, I would not dupe, but warn you. You are too confident. No Stuart was ever constant ; they are a fickle, false race."
But the Duchess turned fiercely on him.
"Enough," she said, with a majestic wave of her white, jeweled hand - "enough of your warning as of your threats. I can defend myself equally against Stuart fickleness as Claverton treachery. Leave me in peace."
Claverton smiled.
In truth he was not unaccustomed to these summary dismissals, and he never yet found them affect his future welcomes.
This time, however, the smile was more malicious than usual, and with only the haughtiest of salutations, he opened the door and disappeared.
Before the Duchess could reach the other end of the apartment, however, it again opened , and he reappeared.
"One word of advice, even if you despise it. Postpone petitioning for the life of Claude Night, if you would preserve what favour still remains."
And then he was gone.
The Duchess had not even turned her head, but as the door closed again, she threw herself on the chair he had occupied, and clasping her hands passionately, she exclaimed, "Attempt but to work my downfall, Henry Claverton, and like a demon from the world of darkness I will be on you, and veritably hunt you to perdition! Dupe me ! Make a tool of me ! Ha! little know you what I am!"
Again she paced up and down, and once more returned to the chair.
"Sunny day!" she muttered. "No, it cannot be! Still, Charles would descend to that I believe!"
In her solitude she took no heed to curb the fierce wrath blazing from her dark eyes. All the force of her passionate character seemed to gather there, by the expression of her still young face, and one might thereby trace the workings of a nature which was certainly far more demoniac than angelic, in spite of the beautiful envelope.
Suddenly, however, a knock at the door disturbed  the fierce dreamer, and the next instant a young girl, whose dress betokened her of the better class of servants, yet not my lady’s equal, entered, bearing a sealed packet on a salver.
"My orders were to deliver this into your Grace’s own hands," she said, in a fresh, pleasant tone, but bending her clear brown eyes a little inquisitively on her haughty mistress’s face; "though where it came from the saints only know, and its of such queer superscription that methinks your Grace will require all your scholarship to make it out."
"There give it here, girl!" and the Duchess almost snatched it from her, and looked eagerly at the writing.
To tell the truth, she had hoped it was from her royal lover; but in an instant saw that this was not the case, and so did her young tirewoman, Maude Neville, by the frown which contracted her mistress’s brows.
"I think it was old Jakes’s daughter that handed it me, your Grace. Can it be from the poor prisoner under sentence? "- and Maude’s rich colour showed that she was almost as much interested in the said prisoner as the proud Duchess.
"Tut, girl ! Claude Night would scarcely venture now to address me," said Henrietta; but nevertheless she took the almost illegible scrawl to the light, and bent over it with flushed cheeks, and eyes less fierce considerably than they had been a few moments ago.
End Chapter III.