A fortune, a toast, a wit, and a beauty, she combined all the things either man or woman could desire to attach themselves to the train of; and had her air been less regal, and her wit less keen of edge, she would have been so beset by flatterers and toadies that life would have been burdensome.

But this she would not have, and was swift enough to detect the man whose debts drove him to the expedient of daring to privately think of the usefulness of her fortune, or the woman who manoeuvred to gain reputation or success by means of her position and power.
"They would be about me like vultures if I were weak fool enough to let them," she said to Anne.

"They cringe and grovel like spaniels, and flatter till 'tis like to make one sick.

'Tis always so with toadies; they have not the wit to see that their flattery is an insolence, since it supposes adulation so rare that one may be moved by it.

The men with empty pockets would marry me, forsooth, and the women be dragged into company clinging to my petticoats.