This young lady’s flightiness is shown in her letters. She thought no life worth living except the life at court, and when she was in the country on a visit to her mother, she wrote to Mrs. Howard: “You will think, I suppose, that I have had no flirtation since I am here; but you will be mistaken; for the moment I entered Farnham, a man, in his own hair, cropped, and a brown coat, stopped the coach to bid me welcome, in a very gallant way; and we had a visit, yesterday, from a country clown of this place, who did all he could to persuade me to be tired of the influence and fatigue of a court life, and intimated that a quiet country one would be very agreeable after it, and he would answer that in seven years I should have a little court of my own. I think this is very well advanced for the short time I have been here.”[92] And again, when she was anxious to return to Leicester House, she writes: “Pray, desire my Lord Lumley[93] to send the coach to Godalming next Wednesday, that I may go off on Thursday, which will be a happy day, for I am very weary of The Holt, though I bragged to Carteret[94] that I was very well pleased.... If my Lord Lumley does not send the coach, he never shall have the least flirtation more with me. Perhaps he may be glad of me for a _summer suit_ next year at Richmond, when he has no other business upon his days. Next Wednesday the coach must come, or I die.... One good thing I have got by the long time I have been here, which is, the being more sensible than ever I was of my happiness in being maid of honour; I won’t say God preserve me so neither, that would not be so well.”[95] Alas! poor Miss Howe did not long remain a maid of honour. Soon after these letters were written she was betrayed into a fatal indiscretion; she was expelled from court, and died a few years later of a broken heart. Her fall made a great sensation in the Princess’s household, so great that it shows that such cases were uncommon, for however much the maids of honour might flirt, and however free might be their wit and conversation, like their mistress, they kept their virtue intact. Poor Sophia’s betrayer was Anthony Lowther, brother of Lord Lonsdale; he was base enough not to marry her. Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in a poem written nearly twenty years later, introduces the tale of this unfortunate girl’s ruin:-- Poor girl! she once was thought extremely fair, Till worn by love, and tortured by despair. Her pining cheek betray’d the inward smart; Her breaking looks foretold a breaking heart. At Leicester House her passion first began, And Nunty Lowther was a proper man: But when the Princess did to Kew remove, She could not bear the absence of her love, But flew away.... Mrs. Howard was the most be-rhymed of the more mature ladies. Lord Peterborough penned her praises in both prose and verse. Perhaps the best known of his effusions is the poem beginning:--