; for on your answer all my happiness depends. What
do you think of it?" "Nothing, sir," Lady Sarah answered demurely, with
downcast eyes. "Pooh!" exclaimed the King, as he turned away in dudgeon,
"nothing comes of nothing."

Thus foolishly Lady Sarah turned her back on a throne, which there is
small doubt might have been hers for a word. Why that word was not
spoken will always remain a mystery. It was said that her heart had
already been won by Lord Newbattle, a handsome young gallant of the
Court; but what was taken for a conquest seems to have been but a
passing flirtation. How little Lord Newbattle's heart was involved was
shortly proved when, on learning that Lady Sarah had been thrown from
her horse and had broken her leg, he made the heartless remark, "That
will do no great harm, for her legs were ugly enough before!"

The news of this accident, however, had a very different effect on the
young King, who was consumed with anxiety about the girl he still loved
passionately, in spite of her coldness. He promptly sent the Court
surgeon to attend to her; kept couriers constantly travelling to and fro
to bring the latest bulletins, and knew no peace until she was restored
to health again. When at last she was able to return to London he was
unremitting in his attentions to her. He was never happy apart from her;
and, in fact, his intentions became so marked that his mother, the
Princess-Dowager, and the ministers were reduced to despair.

Secret orders were given that the young people were never to be allowed
to be together. The Princess, indeed, carried her interference to the
extent of breaking in on their conferences, and rudely laughing in Lady
Sarah's face as she led her son away. "I felt many a time," the insulted
girl said in later years, "that I should have loved to box her ears."
But Lady Sarah, who seems at last to have awakened to the attractions of
the alliance offered to her, was not the girl to sit down tamely under
such interference with her liberty. Her spirit was aroused, and she
brought all her arts of coquetry to her aid.

If she could not see the King at Court she would see him elsewhere. When
George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah,
attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her
rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of
rustic beauty well-calculated to make his conquest more complete.

Once, it is said, when she