“Your Royal Highness need not be put in mind who I am, nor whence you took me: that I acted not like what I was born, others may reproach me; but you took me from happiness and brought me to misery, that I might reproach you. That I have long lost your heart I have long seen, and long mourned: to gain it, or rather to reward the gift you made me of it, I sacrificed my time, my youth, my character, the world, my family, and everything that a woman can sacrifice to a man she loves; how little I considered my interest, you must know by my never naming my interest to you when I made this sacrifice, and by my trusting to your honour, when I showed so little regard, when put in balance with my love to my own. I have resigned everything for your sake but my life; and, had you loved me still, I would have risked even that too to please you; but as it is, I cannot think, in my state of health, of going out of England, far from all friends and all physicians I can trust, and of whom I stand in so much need. My child is the only consolation I have left; I cannot leave him, nor shall anything but death ever make me quit the country he is in.” When Frederick received this letter, instead of being touched by its pathos, he flew into a rage, and swore that the minx could never have written it, and he would be revenged on the rascal who helped her to concoct it. He took all his friends into his confidence, and Miss Vane took all hers, and the matter soon became the principal topic of conversation at court, from the Queen and the Princesses downwards. Miss Vane gained much sympathy by repeating the Prince’s brutal message, that “if she would not live abroad she might for him starve in England”. Everybody sympathised with her, and everybody blamed the Prince, who thereupon threw over Lord Baltimore, and declared that he had never sent such a message; he must have been misunderstood. On hearing this, Miss Vane, acting on the advice of Pulteney, who was thought by many to have written for her the first letter, and other friends, wrote a more submissive letter to the Prince. In it she declared that she had certainly received the message from Lord Baltimore, though she could hardly believe that it came from the Prince’s lips. It was for him to show whether he had said those words or not. If he had not, she felt sure he would treat her fairly; if he had, then all the world would know how she had been ill-treated and betrayed.