When the Prince of Orange came over to marry the Princess
Royal, a sort of boarded gallery was erected from the windows of the
great drawing-room of the palace, and was constructed so as to cross the
garden to the Lutheran chapel in the Friary, where the duchess lived.
The Prince of Orange being ill, went to Bath, and the marriage was
delayed for some weeks. Meantime the widows of Marlborough House were
darkened by the gallery. 'I wonder,' cried the old duchess, 'when my
neighbour George will take away his orange-chest!' The structure, with
its pent-house roof, really resembling an orange-chest.
Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, whose attractions, great as they were, proved
insufficient to rivet the exclusive admiration of the accomplished
Hervey, had become his wife in 1720, some time before her husband had
been completely enthralled with the gilded prison doors of a court. She
was endowed with that intellectual beauty calculated to attract a man of
talent: she was highly educated, of great talent; possessed of _savoir
faire_, infinite good temper, and a strict sense of duty. She also
derived from her father, Brigadier Lepel, who was of an ancient family
in Sark, a considerable fortune.
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