cted, it would not be easy to see me in public now, I am afraid. I
will therefore take care to avoid being at the Lodge at the same time,
to prevent any unreasonable clamour or stories that might originate in
my being so near your Majesty without waiting on you."

"Oh," said the Queen, promptly, "you may come to me at the Castle: it
will not make me uneasy."

The Duchess, however, still persevered. "I then appealed to her Majesty
again, if she did not herself know, &c. And whether she did not know me
to be of a temper incapable of, &c."

"You desired no answer, and you shall have none."

Finding Anne thus inflexible, the Duchess rose up in a towering rage at
having vainly humiliated herself, and gave vent to her passion in a
storm of recrimination.

"This usage," concludes the Duchess, "was so severe, and these words, so
often repeated, were so shocking, &c, that I could not conquer myself,
but said the most disrespectful thing I ever spoke to the Queen in my
life; and that was, that I was confident her Majesty would suffer for
such an instance of inhumanity."

She quitted the presence, in fact, exclaiming, "God will punish you,
Madam, for your inhumanity."

"That only concerns myself," drily answered the Queen.

"And thus ended," says the Duchess, "this remarkable conversation, the
last I ever had with her Majesty." (April 6th, 1710.)

Such, too, was the end of a thirty years' friendship, and the last
interview between Anne and her once-cherished favourite.[49] The Duchess
remained in the household for a short time afterwards, but never saw her
royal mistress save on public occasions; and from that day the Queen
never spoke to her again.

[49] Private Correspondence of the Duchess of Marlborough, vol. 1,
p. 301.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DISGRACE OF THE DUCHESS.

THE disgrace of the Duchess involved the fall of the Whigs. A few days
after the scene at Kensington, Anne named two Tories to court
appointments, and next dismissed successively all the Whigs from the
Ministry--Boyle, Russell, Godolphin, and Walpole. They were replaced by
Bolingbroke, Harley, the Earl of Jersey, and the Dukes of Ormonde and
Shrewsbury. Anne spared only the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough--not
from compassion but through fear. The irate Mistress of the Robes drove
about London daily in her splendid equipage, and repeated at every visit
she made that she would publish the Queen's letters, and that some day
the infamou