There was Saint John, handsome, but delicate looking, with a half sneer on his face, and dressed in the extremity of fashion, with a coat of peach-coloured velvet with immense cuffs, crimson leather shoes with diamond buckles; his sword was also diamond hilted, his hands were almost hidden in lace ruffles, and he wore his hair in ringlets of some twenty inches in length, tied behind with a red ribbon.

The tall man, with a haughty but irritable face, in the scarlet uniform of a general officer, was the Earl of Peterborough.

There too were Godolphin and Orford, both leading members of the cabinet; the Earl of Sutherland, the Dukes of Devonshire and Newcastle, Lord Nottingham, and many others.
At last the audience was over, and the minister, bowing to all, withdrew, and the visitors began to leave.

A lackey came up to Rupert and requested him to follow him; and bidding adieu to his new friends, who both gave him their addresses and begged him to call up on them, he followed the servant into the hall and upstairs into a cosy room, such as would now be called a boudoir.

There stood the Earl of Marlborough, by the chair in which a lady of great beauty and commanding air was sitting.
"Sarah," he said, "this is my young friend, Rupert Holliday, who as you know did me good service in the midlands." The countess held out her hand kindly to Rupert, and he bent over it and touched it with his lips.
"You must remember you are my friend as well as my husband's," she said.