excellent advice, she had forbidden her
all manner of connection with so dangerous a person. Miss Temple was
afterwards informed, that the song that had so greatly provoked her,
alluded to Miss Price only: this was confirmed to her by every person,
with additional execrations against Miss Hobart, for such a scandalous
imposition. Such great coldness after so much familiarity, made many
believe, that this adventure was not altogether a fiction.

This had been sufficient to have disgraced Miss Hobart at court, and to
have totally ruined her reputation in London, had she not been, upon the
present, as well as upon a former occasion, supported by the duchess:
her royal highness pretended to treat the whole story as romantic and
visionary, or as solely arising from private pique: she chid Miss Temple,
for her impertinent credulity: turned away the governess and her niece,
for the lies with which she pretended they supported the imposture; and
did many improper things in order to re-establish Miss Hobart's honour,
which, however, she failed in accomplishing. She had her reasons for not
entirely abandoning her, as will appear in the sequel.

Miss Temple, who continually reproached herself with injustice, with
respect to Lord Rochester, and who, upon the faith of Killegrew's word,
thought him the most Honourable man in England, was only solicitous to
find out some opportunity of easing her mind, by making him some
reparation for the rigour with which she had treated him: these
favourable dispositions, in the hands of a man of his character, might
have led to consequences of which she was not aware; but heaven did not
allow him an opportunity of profiting by them.

Ever since he had first appeared at court he seldom failed being banished
from it, at least once in the year; for whenever a word presented itself
to his pen, or to his tongue, he immediately committed it to paper, or
produced it in conversation, without any manner of regard to the
consequences the ministers, the mistresses, and even the king himself,
were frequently the subjects of his sarcasms; and had not the prince,
whom he thus treated, been possessed of one of the most forgiving and
gentle tempers, his first disgrace had certainly been his last.

Just at the time that Miss Temple was desirous of seeing him, in order to
apologize for the uneasiness which the infamous calumnies and black
aspersions of Miss Hobart had occasioned both of them, he was forbid the