The Queen held a reception the same evening, and, as ill-luck would have it, the English envoy Bourguait came. The Queen, forgetting her prudence, and thinking the plan was well matured, actually confided to him the Prince’s project. Bourguait, overwhelmed with astonishment, asked the Queen if it were really true. “Certainly,” she replied, “and to show you how true it is, he has sent Lamotte here, who has already informed the King of everything.” “Oh! why does your Majesty tell me this? I am wretched, for I must prevent it!” exclaimed the envoy. Greatly dismayed, the Queen asked him why. “Because I am my Sovereign’s envoy; because my office requires of me that I should inform him of so important a matter. I shall send off a messenger to England this very evening. Would to God I had known nothing of all this!” The Queen entreated him not to do so, but he was firm, and despatched the messenger to England. Thus did Queen Sophie Dorothea defeat the scheme for which she had toiled many years at the very moment of its fruition. On receipt of the news George the Second sent Colonel Lorne to Hanover, with commands to bring the Prince over to England without an instant’s delay. When Lorne arrived at Hanover a few days later he found Prince Frederick giving a ball at Herrenhausen. He gave the King’s message, and acted with so much despatch that at the end of the ball the Prince, escorted by Lorne, and attended by only one servant, quitted Hanover for ever. His plot had failed; there was nothing else to be done. The rage and disappointment when the news of the Prince’s departure reached the Court of Berlin was very great. The King blustered and swore, called Wilhelmina “English _canaille_,” and beat her and her brother in a shocking manner; the Queen broke down and took to her bed; Wilhelmina fainted away. But it was all to no purpose; not only her marriage, but the double marriage scheme, vanished into thin air.[30] Frederick did not find a warm welcome awaiting him from his parents. The Prince landed in England the first week in December (1728), and made his way to London; he arrived at St. James’s without any ceremony, and was smuggled up the backstairs as though he had been a pretender rather than the heir-apparent to the crown. “Yesterday,” we read, “His Royal Highness Prince Frederick came to Whitechapel about seven in the evening, and proceeded thence privately in a hackney coach to St. James’s. His Royal Highness alighted at the Friary, and walked down to the Queen’s backstairs, and was there conducted to her Majesty’s apartment.”[31]