As he could not for his life imagine what Miss Stewart wished him to do,
or what she would be at, he thought upon reforming his establishment of
mistresses, to try whether jealousy was not the real occasion of her
uneasiness. It was for this reason that, after having solemnly declared
he would have nothing more to say to the Duchess of Cleveland, since her
intrigue with Churchill, he discarded, without any exception, all the
other mistresses which he had in various parts of the town. The Nell
Gwyns, the Misses Davis, and the joyous rain of singers and dancers in
his majesty's theatre, were all dismissed. All these sacrifices were
ineffectual: Miss Stewart continued to torment, and almost to drive the
king to distraction; but his majesty soon after found out the real cause
of this coldness.

This discovery was owing to the officious Duchess of Cleveland, who, ever
since her disgrace, had railed most bitterly against Miss Stewart as the
cause of it, and against the king's weakness, who, for an inanimate
idiot, had treated her with so much indignity. As some of her grace's
creatures were still in the king's confidence, by their means she was
informed of the king's uneasiness, and that Miss Stewart's behaviour was
the occasion of it--and as soon as she had found the opportunity she had
so long wished for, she went directly into the king's cabinet, through
the apartment of one of his pages called Chiffinch. This way was not new
to her.

The king was just returned from visiting Miss Stewart, in a very ill
humour: the presence of the Duchess of Cleveland surprised him, and did
not in the least diminish it: she, perceiving this, accosted him in an
ironical tone, and with a smile of indignation. "I hope," said she,
"I may be allowed to pay you my homage, although the angelic Stewart has
forbid you to see me at my own house. I will not make use of reproaches