That the reader may see, however, to what an extraordinary pass the friendship had come which had been so intimate and close, we add the duchess’s account of the concluding interview. Every kind of exasperating circumstance had accumulated in the mean time between the former friends. There had been violent meetings, violent letters by the score; even in the midst of a thanksgiving service Sarah had taken her mistress to task and imperiously bidden her not to answer. Indeed, the poor queen was more or less hunted down, pursued to her last corner of defense, when the mistress of the robes made her sudden appearance at Kensington one April afternoon in the year 1710, when everything was tending toward her downfall. As I was entering, the Queen said she was just going to write to me, and when I began to speak she interrupted me four or five times with these repeated words, “Whatever you have to say you may put it in writing.” I said her Majesty never did so hard a thing to any as to refuse to hear them speak, and assured her that I was not going to trouble her upon the subject which I knew to be so ungrateful to her, but that I could not possibly rest until I had cleared myself from some particular calumnies with which I had been loaded. I then went on to speak (though the Queen turned away her face from me) and to represent my hard case, that there were those about her Majesty that had made her believe that I said things of her which I was no more capable of saying than of killing my own children. The Queen said without doubt there were many lies told. I then begged, in order to make this trouble the shorter and my own innocence the plainer, that I might know the particulars of which I had been accused, because if I were guilty that would quickly appear, and if I were innocent this method alone would clear me. The Queen replied that she would give me no answer, laying hold on a word in my letter that what I had to say in my own vindication _need have no consequence in obliging her Majesty to answer_, etc., which surely did not at all imply that I did not desire to know the particular things laid to my charge, without which it was impossible for me to clear myself. This I assured her Majesty was all I desired, and that I did not ask the names of the authors or relaters of these calumnies, saying all that I could think reasonably to enforce my just request. I protested to her Majesty that I had no design in giving her this trouble, to solicit the return of her favor, but that my sole view was to clear myself: which was too just a design to be wholly disappointed by her Majesty. Upon this the Queen offered to go out of the room, I following her, and begging leave to clear myself, and the Queen repeating over and over again, “You