The fact is, that the aim of both was not so much to insure their domestic felicity as to gratify their ambition.  Probably they were disappointed in both these aims—­certainly in one of them; talented, indefatigable, popular, lively, and courteous, Lord Hervey, in the House of Commons, advocated in vain, in brilliant orations, the measures of Walpole.  Twelve years, fourteen years elapsed, and he was left in the somewhat subordinate position of vice-chamberlain, in spite of that high order of talents which he possessed, and which would have been displayed to advantage in a graver scene.  The fact has been explained:  the queen could not do without him; she confided in him; her daughter loved him; and his influence in that court was too powerful for Walpole to dispense with an aid so valuable to his own plans.  Some episodes in a life thus frittered away, until, too late, promotion came, alleviated his existence, and gave his wife only a passing uneasiness, if even indeed they imparted a pang.

One of these was his dangerous passion for Miss Vane; another, his platonic attachment to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Whilst he lived on the terms with his wife which is described even by the French as being a ‘Menage de Paris,’ Lord Hervey, found in another quarter the sympathies which, as a husband, he was too well-bred to require.  It is probable that he always admired his wife more than any other person, for she had qualities that were quite congenial to the tastes of a wit and a beau in those times.  Lady Hervey was not only singularly captivating, young, gay, and handsome; but a complete model also of the polished, courteous, high-bred woman of fashion.  Her manners are said by Lady Louisa Stuart to have ’had a foreign tinge, which some called affected; but they were gentle, easy, and altogether exquisitely pleasing.’  She was in secret a Jacobite—­and resembled in that respect most of the fine ladies in Great Britain.  Whiggery and Walpolism were vulgar:  it was haut ton to take offence when James II. was anathematized, and quite good taste to hint that some people wished well to the Chevalier’s attempts:  and this way of speaking owed its fashion probably to Frederick of Wales, whose interest in Flora Macdonald, and whose concern for the exiled family, were among the few amiable traits of his disposition.  Perhaps they arose from a wish to plague his parents, rather than from a greatness of character foreign to this prince.

Lady Hervey was in the bloom of youth, Lady Mary in the zenith of her age, when they became rivals:  Lady Mary had once excited the jealousy of Queen Caroline when Princess of Wales.

‘How becomingly Lady Mary is dressed to-night,’ whispered George II. to his wife, whom he had called up from the card-table to impart to her that important conviction.  ‘Lady Mary always dresses well,’ was the cold and curt reply.

Lord Hervey had been married about seven years when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu re-appeared at the court of Queen Caroline, after her long residence in Turkey.  Lord Hervey was thirty-three years of age; Lady Mary was verging on forty.  She was still a pretty woman, with a piquant, neat-featured face; which does not seem to have done any justice to a mind at once masculine and sensitive, nor to a heart capable of benevolence—­capable of strong attachments, and of bitter hatred.