How bold and pretty she looked in
her undress! Even Pepys--no very sound moralist, though a vast
hypocrite--tells us: Nelly, 'all unready' was 'very pretty, prettier far
than he thought.' But to see how she was 'painted,' would, he thought,
'make a man mad.'
'Madame Ellen,' as after her _elevation_, as it was termed, she was
called, might, since she held long a great sway over Charles's fancy, be
suffered to scamper about Ham House--where her merry laugh perhaps
scandalised the now Saintly Duchess of Lauderdale,--just to impose on
the world; for Nell was regarded as the Protestant champion of the
court, in opposition to her French rival, the Duchess of Portsmouth.
Let us suppose that she has been at Ham House, and is gone off to Pall
Mall again, where she can see her painted face in every turn. The king
has departed, and Killigrew, who, at all events, is loyal, and the
true-hearted Duke of Richmond, all are away to London. In yon
sanctimonious-looking closet, next to the duchess's bed-chamber, with her
psalter and her prayer-book on her desk, which is fixed to her great
chair, and that very cane which still hangs there serving as her support
when she comes forth from that closet, murmur and wrangle the component
parts of that which was never mentioned without fear--the Cabal.
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