sibly 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