d to her
secretly at the next opportunity. She received it from him with a
smile, which scared all doubts of her frailty from his mind, and with a
pressure of his hand which awoke the tenderest feelings in his heart.

He was now convinced her husband had allowed jealousy to blind him, and
had magnified his unworthy suspicions to assurances of guilt. Is this
view Hamilton was fully confirmed by a letter he received from her the
following day in answer to his own. "Are you not," said she, "ashamed to
give any credit to the visions of a jealous fellow, who brought nothing
else with him from Italy? Is it possible that the story of the green
stockings, upon which he has founded his suspicions, should have imposed
upon you, accompanied as it is with such pitiful circumstances? Since he
has made you his confidant, why did not he boast of breaking in pieces
my poor harmless guitar? This exploit, perhaps, might have convinced
you more than all the rest; recollect yourself, and if you are really in
love with me, thank fortune for a groundless jealousy, which diverts to
another quarter the attention he might pay to my attachment for the most
amiable and the most dangerous man at court."

Anointed by this flattering unction, such wounds as Hamilton had
experienced were quickly healed; alas, only to bleed afresh at the
certain knowledge that this charming woman had been making him her dupe!
For soon after, in a moment of indiscretion, and whilst the whole court,
including her majesty, was assembled in the card-room, my lady there
permitted the duke a liberty which confirmed her husband in his
suspicions of their intimacy. Hamilton at hearing this was wild
with fury, and advised Lord Chesterfield to carry her away from
the allurements of the court, and seclude her in one of his country
mansions. This was an advice to which the earl listened with
complaisance, and carried out with despatch, to her intense
mortification.

The whole court was amused by the story, but dismayed at the punishment
my lord inflicted upon his lady. Anthony Hamilton declares that in
England "they looked with astonishment upon a man who could be so
uncivil as to be jealous of his wife; and in the city of London it was
a prodigy, till that time unknown, to see a husband have recourse
to violent means to prevent what jealousy fears, and what it always
deserves." He adds, they endeavoured to excuse my lord by laying all the
blame on his bad education, which mad