The Prince of Wales, who was early attracted by Mary Bellenden’s charms, made addresses to her which she did not reciprocate. The Prince was not accustomed to having his advances slighted, and knowing that Mary Bellenden had her little bills, as a hint by no means delicate, he sat down one evening by her side, and taking out his purse began to count his money. The lively Bellenden bore it for a while, but when he was about to tell his guineas all over again, she cried: “Sir, I cannot bear it; if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room”. This remonstrance had so little effect that he proceeded to press his attentions upon her, and jingled the gold in her ear. Thereupon she lost her temper and knocked the purse out of his hand, scattering the guineas far and wide, and ran out of the room. In other ways, too, she showed her disapproval of his advances, for, writing later to Mrs. Howard, about a new maid of honour, she says: “I hope you will put her a little in the way of behaving before the Princess, such as not turning her back; and one thing runs mightily in my head, which is, crossing her arms, _as I did to the Prince_, and told him I was not cold, but I liked to stand so”.[91] Mary Bellenden had a great bulwark to her virtue in the fact that she was deeply in love with Colonel John Campbell, many years later the Duke of Argyll, who was then one of the Prince’s grooms of the bedchamber. The Prince discovered that she was in love, though he did not know with whom, and, so far from showing resentment, he told her that if she would promise not to marry without his knowledge, he would do what he could for her and her lover. But Mary Bellenden distrusted the Prince’s good faith, and a year or two later secretly married Campbell. The Prince did not dismiss Colonel Campbell from court, but he never forgave Mary, and whenever she came to a drawing-room, he would whisper reproaches in her ear, or shake his finger at her and scowl. The lady did not care, as she had married the man she loved. Even the prudish Miss Meadows found a poet, for Doddington in one of his trifles couples her name with that of Lady Hervey:-- As chaste as Hervey or Miss Meadows, and Pope, in some lines addressed to Sophy Howe, introduces Meadows in no amiable light:-- What is prudery? ’Tis a beldam Seen with wit and beauty seldom, ’Tis a fear that starts at shadows; ’Tis (no ’tisn’t) like Miss Meadows; ’Tis a virgin hard of feature, Old and void of all good nature, Lean and fretful; would seem wise Yet plays the fool before she dies. ’Tis an ugly envious shrew That rails at dear Lepel and you. Sophia Howe, whose wild spirits were responsible for many lively scenes at Leicester House, often figured in verse. Gay alludes to her giddiness when he says:-- Perhaps Miss Howe came there by chance, Nor knows with whom, nor why she comes along.