"if it be only to repeat those things which you have said
so often, I shall think you the worst of men and the most
ungrateful; and 'tis to no purpose to imagine that I will
be made ridiculous to the world."

Still again she gave signs of thawing. To his next letter, in which he
wrote:

"I do love and adore you with all my heart and soul, so
much that by all that is good, I do and ever will be
better pleased with your happiness than my own,"

she answered:

"If it were sure that you have that passion for me which
you say you have, you would find out some way to make
yourself happy--it is in your power. Therefore press me
no more to see you, since it is what I cannot in honour
approve of; and if I have done so much, be as good as to
consider who was the cause of it."

At last Churchill had received a crumb of real encouragement. Even the
veriest poltroon in love must take heart at such words as these--"you
would find out some way to make yourself happy--_it is in your power_."
And it was with a light step and buoyant heart that he went the
following day to the Duchess's drawing-room to pursue in person the
advantage her letter suggested. But the very moment he entered the room
by one door his capricious mistress left it by the other; and when, in
his anger at such cavalier treatment, he wrote to ask the meaning of it,
and if she did not think it impertinent, she left him in no doubt by