ng
that he was in want of money, had sent to offer him her granddaughter,
Lady Diana Spencer, with a fortune of L100,000. The prince accepted the
young lady, and a day was fixed for his marriage in the duchess's lodge
at the Great Park, Windsor. But Sir Robert Walpole, getting intelligence
of the plot, the nuptials were stopped. The duchess never forgave either
Walpole or the royal family, and took an early opportunity of insulting
the latter. When the Prince of Orange came over to marry the Princess
Royal, a sort of boarded gallery was erected from the windows of the
great drawing-room of the palace, and was constructed so as to cross the
garden to the Lutheran chapel in the Friary, where the duchess lived.
The Prince of Orange being ill, went to Bath, and the marriage was
delayed for some weeks. Meantime the widows of Marlborough House were
darkened by the gallery. 'I wonder,' cried the old duchess, 'when my
neighbour George will take away his orange-chest!' The structure, with
its pent-house roof, really resembling an orange-chest.

Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, whose attractions, great as they were, proved
insufficient to rivet the exclusive admiration of the accomplished
Hervey, had become his wife in 1720, some time before her husband had
been completely enthralled with the gilded prison doors of a court. She
was endowed with that intellectual beauty calculated to attract a man of
talent: she was highly educated, of great talent; possessed of _savoir
faire_, infinite good temper, and a strict sense of duty. She also
derived from her father, Brigadier Lepel, who was of an ancient family
in Sark, a considerable fortune. Good and correct as she was, Lady
Hervey viewed with a fashionable composure the various intimacies formed
during the course of their married life by his lordship.

The fact is, that the aim of both was not so much to insure their
domestic felicity as to gratify their ambition. Probably they were
disappointed in both these aims--certainly in one of them; talented,
indefatigable, popular, lively, and courteous, Lord Hervey, in the House
of Commons, advocated in vain, in brilliant orations, the measures of
Walpole. Twelve years, fourteen years elapsed, and he was left in the
somewhat subordinate position of vice-chamberlain, in spite of that high
order of talents which he possessed, and which would have been displayed
to advantage in a graver scene. The fact has been explained: the queen
could not do witho