she lavished on her gallants; but that which most sensibly affected him, was the late coldness and threats of Miss Stewart.  He long since had offered her all the settlements and all the titles she could desire, until he had an opportunity more effectually to provide for her, which she had pretended only to decline, for fear of the scandal they might occasion, on her being raised to a rank which would attract the public notice; but since the return of the court, she had given herself other airs:  sometimes she was for retiring from court, to appease the continual uneasiness her presence gave the queen:  at other times it was to avoid temptations, by which she wished to insinuate that her innocence was still preserved:  in short, the king’s heart was continually distracted by alarms, or oppressed by humour and caprice.

As he could not for his life imagine what Miss Stewart wished him to do, or what she would be at, he thought upon reforming his establishment of mistresses, to try whether jealousy was not the real occasion of her uneasiness.  It was for this reason that, after having solemnly declared he would have nothing more to say to the Duchess of Cleveland, since her intrigue with Churchill, he discarded, without any exception, all the other mistresses which he had in various parts of the town.  The Nell Gwyns, the Misses Davis, and the joyous rain of singers and dancers in his majesty’s theatre, were all dismissed.  All these sacrifices were ineffectual:  Miss Stewart continued to torment, and almost to drive the king to distraction; but his majesty soon after found out the real cause of this coldness.

This discovery was owing to the officious Duchess of Cleveland, who, ever since her disgrace, had railed most bitterly against Miss Stewart as the cause of it, and against the king’s weakness, who, for an inanimate idiot, had treated her with so much indignity.  As some of her grace’s creatures were still in the king’s confidence, by their means she was informed of the king’s uneasiness, and that Miss Stewart’s behaviour was the occasion of it—­and as soon as she had found the opportunity she had so long wished for, she went directly into the king’s cabinet, through the apartment of one of his pages called Chiffinch.  This way was not new to her.

The king was just returned from visiting Miss Stewart, in a very ill humour:  the presence of the Duchess of Cleveland surprised him, and did not in the least diminish it:  she, perceiving this, accosted him in an ironical tone, and with a smile of indignation.  “I hope,” said she, “I may be allowed to pay you my homage, although the angelic Stewart has forbid you to see me at my own house.  I will not make use of reproaches and expostulations, which would disgrace myself:  still less will I endeavour to excuse frailties which nothing can justify, since your constancy for me deprives me of all defence, considering I am the only person you have honoured with your tenderness, who has made herself unworthy