Before this the means of the pair had been but small. Marlborough had been long deprived of all preferment, and the duchess informs us that she had discharged in the princess’s household all the offices for which afterward she was so highly paid on an allowance of £400 a year. It was for this reason that the dukedom was unwelcome to her. “I do agree with you,” her husband writes to her, “that we ought not to wish for a greater title till we have a better estate,” and he assures her that “I shall have a mind to nothing but as it may be easy to you.” It was in this strain that the great conqueror always addressed his wife, and it would be difficult to say which of her two adorers, her husband or her queen, showed the deepest devotion. When Marlborough set out for his first campaign in the war which was to cover him with glory, and in which for the first time he had full scope, this is how he writes to the companion of his life (she had gone with him to Margate to see him embark): It is impossible to express with what a heavy heart I parted from you when I was by the water’s side. I could have given my life to have come back though I knew my own weakness so much that I durst not, for I know I should have exposed myself to the company. I did for a great while with a perspective glass look out upon the cliffs in hopes I might have had one sight of you. We are now out of sight of Margate and I have neither soul nor spirits, but I do at this time suffer so much that nothing but being with you can recompense it. These lover-like words were written by a man of fifty-two to his wife of forty-two, to whom he had been married for nearly a quarter of a century. In all the pauses of these wars, amid the [Illustration: WINDSOR TERRACE, LOOKING WESTWARD. ENGRAVED BY J. W. EVANS AFTER AQUATINT BY P. SANDBY] plans and combinations of armies, and all the hard thinking and hard fighting, the perpetual activity and movement of his life for the next ten years, the same voice of passionate attachment, love, and longing penetrates for us the tumults of the time. She was flattered to the top of her bent both by husband and mistress; and it is not much to be wondered at if she came to think herself indispensable and above all law.