the Duke shamefacedly placed in his hand than his anger blazed into
flame. "You idiot! You blockhead! You villain!" he shouted, purple in
face and hoarse with passion. "I tell you that woman shall never be a
Royal Duchess--she shall never be anything." "What must I do, then?"
gasped the Duke, quailing before the Royal outburst. "Go abroad until I
can decide what to do," thundered the King, waving his brother
imperiously away.

It was a very crestfallen Duke who returned to Calais to face the
upbraiding of Duchess Anne on his failure. But it took much more than
this to cow a Luttrell. She at least was not afraid of any king. She
would defy him to his face, and compel him to acknowledge her--before
her child was born. And within a few weeks she was installed at
Cumberland House, with all the state and more than the airs of a Royal
Princess. The days of concealment were over; she stood avowed to the
world, Duchess of Cumberland and sister-in-law to the King; and she only
smiled when George, in his Royal wrath at such insolence, announced
through his Chamberlain that "there was no road between Cumberland House
and Windsor Castle--that the Castle doors would be closed against any
who dared to visit his repudiated sister-in-law."

There were some, however, who dared to brave George's displeasure by
paying court to the Duchess, whose beauty and grace surrounded her with
a small body of admirers. The daughter of an Irish nobleman played to
perfection her new and exalted _rôle_ of Princess. "No woman of her
time," says Lord Hervey, "performed the honours of her drawing-room with
such grace, affability, and dignity." And, in spite of George's frowns,
the only real thorn in her bed of roses was the knowledge that the
Duchess of Gloucester, who, as the daughter of a Piccadilly sempstress,
was infinitely her inferior by birth, and not even her superior in