Perhaps they arose from a wish to plague his
parents, rather than from a greatness of character foreign to this
prince.
Lady Hervey was in the bloom of youth, Lady Mary in the zenith of her
age, when they became rivals: Lady Mary had once excited the jealousy of
Queen Caroline when Princess of Wales.
'How becomingly Lady Mary is dressed to-night,' whispered George II. to
his wife, whom he had called up from the card-table to impart to her
that important conviction. 'Lady Mary always dresses well,' was the cold
and curt reply.
Lord Hervey had been married about seven years when Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu re-appeared at the court of Queen Caroline, after her long
residence in Turkey. Lord Hervey was thirty-three years of age; Lady
Mary was verging on forty. She was still a pretty woman, with a piquant,
neat-featured face; which does not seem to have done any justice to a
mind at once masculine and sensitive, nor to a heart capable of
benevolence--capable of strong attachments, and of bitter hatred.
Like Lady Hervey, she lived with her husband on well-bred terms: there
existed no quarrel between them; no avowed ground of coldness; it was
the icy boundary of frozen feeling that severed them; the sure and
lasting though polite destroyer of all bonds, indifference.
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