So saying, the earl moved away among his visitors, leaving Rupert flushed with pleasure and confusion.  The young gentlemen to whom the earl had introduced him, much surprised at the flattering manner in which the great general had spoken of the lad before them, at once entered into conversation with him, and hearing that he was but newly come to London, offered to show him the various places where men of fashion resorted, and begged him to consider them at his disposal.  Rupert, who had been carefully instructed by his grandfather in courtly expression and manner, returned many thanks to the gentlemen for their obliging offers, of which, after he had again spoken to the earl, and knew what commands he would lay upon him, he would thankfully avail himself.

It was nearly an hour before the Earl of Marlborough had made the round of the antechamber, but the time passed quickly to Rupert.  The room was full of men whose names were prominent in the history of the time, and these Sir John Loveday, and Lord Fairholm, who were lively young men, twenty-two or twenty-three years old, pointed out to him, often telling him a merry story or some droll jest regarding them.  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.  “He tells me you saved his life; and although I can scarce credit the tale, seeing how young you are, yet courage and skill dwell not necessarily in great bodies.  Truly, Master Holliday, I am deeply indebted to you; and Sarah Churchill is true in her friendships.”