To one of those, however, who could not be classed amongst the most strict in their notions of morality, his open and daring violation of even common decency was a subject of bitter and anxious thought. Sir Thomas Overbury could not shut out the conviction, that this disgraceful connexion might prove a serious obstacle in the way of his favourite project, of allying his patron to the Blood Royal of England by a marriage with Arabella Stuart; and every jest he heard upon the subject came painfully to his ear. Sometimes he thanked heaven that Arabella was absent, and hoped that Rochester's passion would be as short-lived as it was fierce; but when he saw that, on the contrary, it became every day more and more ardent and outrageous, he asked himself if it might not be better to hurry on the marriage with Arabella without any farther delay; and, by engaging the King to exercise his full authority, to carry it through as rapidly as possible, in order to bind her for ever to Rochester, before she had such good cause to allege for refusing him her hand. Doubts and perplexities, indeed, surrounded him; for although Carr still talked to him on the subject of his marriage, and, in order to blind his friends to the designs which he knew Overbury would oppose, affected to look upon his union with Arabella, whether he loved her or not, as a thing absolutely necessary to his security and advancement, yet he showed himself occasionally cold and captious, reserved and insincere, towards one who, for a long period, had possessed his fullest confidence, and guided him at will. Many a deep and anxious fit of thought did all these considerations cause Sir Thomas Overbury; and he resolved, after a long deliberation, to try whether, by art, he could not establish a new hold upon the favourite, more firm and tenacious than that of mere gratitude. "I must have some power over him," he said; "I must have something in my hands to give, in order that I may demand that in return which might be otherwise denied, notwithstanding all the services I have rendered him." Such were his thoughts and feelings at the period when the Court removed from Hampton; and we shall now proceed to show the manner in which he endeavoured to effect his object, premising that for some months he had been labouring to bring the King's mind to the particular tone he wanted. It was in the King's closet at the palace of Greenwich. The Monarch was dressed in hunting costume; and, as the season was rapidly approaching when he could no longer venture to hunt the hart, he was somewhat eager and impatient to set out upon his sport.