I consider the duty of a true Englishwoman is to do what honour she can to her native country; and that it would be a sin against the pious love I bear the land of my nativity, to confine the renown due to the Schemers within the small extent of this little island, which ought to be spread wherever men can sigh, or women wish.

'Tis true they have the envy and curses of the old and ugly of both sexes, and a general persecution from all old women; but this is no more than all reformations must expect in their beginning." More than one writer has asserted that it was the wit and beauty of Lady Mary that drew him thither.

At the time the Duke was twenty-four and the lady nine years older.

Certainly he paid her marked attention, but as he paid marked attention to all women who had not a hump or a squint-- sometimes, maybe, he even overlooked the squint--it is as impossible to say whether he was in love with her as it is to assert that she was in love with him.

From the little that is known of their intimacy, it would seem that they were merely good comrades--good comrades of the type that might bite or scratch at any moment.