lk,--glancing at Mademoiselle Schulemberg--'Look at
that _mawkin_, and think of her being my son's passion!'

The duchess, however, like all the Hanoverians, knew how to profit by
royal preference. She took bribes:--she had a settlement of L3,000 a
year. But her daughter was eventually disappointed of the expected
bequest from her father, the king.[24]

In the apartments at St. James's Lord Chesterfield for some time lived,
when he was not engaged in office abroad; and there he dissipated large
sums in play. It was here, too, that Queen Caroline, the wife of George
II., detected the intimacy that existed between Chesterfield and Lady
Suffolk. There was an obscure window in Queen Caroline's apartments,
which looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at
night. One Twelfth Night Lord Chesterfield, having won a large sum at
cards, deposited it with Lady Suffolk, thinking it not safe to carry it
home at night. He was watched, and his intimacy with the mistress of
George II. thereupon inferred. Thenceforth he could obtain no court
influence; and, in desperation, he went into the opposition.

On the death of George I., a singular scene, with which Lord
Chesterfield's interests were connected, occurred in the Privy Council.
Dr Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the king's will, and
delivered it to his successor, expecting that it would be opened and
read in the council; what was his consternation, when his Majesty,
without saying a word, put it into his pocket, and stalked out of the
room with real German imperturbability! Neither the astounded prelate
nor the subservient council ventured to utter a word. The will was never
more heard of: and rumour declared that it was burnt. The contents, of
course, never transpired; and the legacy of L40,000, said to have been
left to the Duchess of Kendal, was never more spoken of, until Lord
Chesterfield, in 1733, married the Countess of Walsingham. In 1743, it
is said, he claimed the legacy--in right of his wife--the Duchess of
Kendal being then dead: and was 'quieted' with L20,000, and got, as
Horace Walpole observes, nothing from the duchess--'except his wife.'

The only excuse that was urged to extenuate this act on the part of
George II., was that his royal father had burned two wills which had
been made in his favour. These were supposed to be the wills of the Duke
and Duchess of Zell and of the Electress Sophia. There was not even
common honesty in the house