romantic and adventurous _rôle_ Fate had assigned to her on the stage of
life. A member of an ancient family, whose women had ever been
distinguished for their virtue as its men for their valour, the Chelsea
infant was destined to shock Society by the laxity of her morals as she
dazzled it by her beauty and charm, and to make herself conspicuous, in
an age none too strait-laced, as an adventuress of rare skill and
daring, and as a profligate in petticoats.

As a child she amused all who knew her by the airs she assumed. Before
she was long out of the nursery she vowed that "she would be a Duchess,"
and a Duchess she was before she died. She was quick to learn the power
of beauty and of a clever tongue; and before she was emancipated from
short frocks she was a finished coquette.

Such was Elizabeth Chudleigh when, at fifteen, she blossomed into
precocious womanhood. Her father, the Colonel, had long been dead, and
his widow had made her home in the neighbourhood of Leicester House,
where the Prince and Princess of Wales held their Court. Here she made
the acquaintance of Mr Pulteney, later Earl of Bath, a great favourite
of the weak and dissolute Prince; and through his interest, Elizabeth,
now a radiantly lovely and supremely fascinating young woman, was
appointed a maid-of-honour to the Princess.

In the environment of a Court, surrounded by gallants, and with women
almost as lovely as herself to pit her charms against, Colonel
Chudleigh's daughter, eager to drink the cup of pleasure and of
conquest, was in her element. She was the merriest madcap in a Court
where licence was unrestrained; and she soon had high-placed lovers at
her dainty feet, including, so they say, none other than Frederick
himself. Coronets galore dazzled her eyes with their rival allurements;