stairs on my cushion?’ To which the Princess coolly replied: ‘There is no upstairs, I believe: the apartments are all on one floor.’ ‘Oh charming! that is delightful!’ rejoined the Duchess; and with a few more queries, to which the Princess always replied with the greatest self-possession and _sang-froid_, as though she were not in the least hurt, this strange royal farce ended. The brother of the Princess of Wales, if he had not an unbounded regard for his sister, at least knew what was due to her and propriety better than his mother. By his directions the Princess represented to the Duchess that if she accepted the Prince’s invitation she would tacitly acknowledge that he was justified in his treatment of his wife. The old lady, as obstinate as her own grandfather, George II., was not to be moved. She saw the matter, she said, in quite another light. She loved her daughter, would do anything in the world for her, but certainly she would not give up going to Carlton House. And in this determination she remained fixed, till, meditating upon the matter, and conceiving that the invitation _may_ have been less out of compliment to herself than intended to draw her into a tacit condemnation of her daughter, she suddenly declined to go, and with mingled womanly and especially matronly feeling she invited the Princess to dine with her, instead. The Princess of Wales was, undoubtedly, fast losing the small remnant of popularity among the higher classes which had hitherto sustained her. As her more noble friends silently cast her off she filled the void left by them with persons of inferior birth, and sometimes of indifferent reputation. Her own immediate attendants laughed at her, her ways, her pronunciation, and her opinions. She was indeed a puzzle to them. Sometimes they found in her a tone of exalted sentiment; at others she was coarse or frivolous: the ‘tissue of her character’ was made up of the most variegated web that ever went to the dressing of a woman. Perhaps one of the most foolish, if not the most unnecessary, of her acts, was an attempt which she made to sell a portion of her jewels. It was doubtless intended by way of proof that an application to parliament for an increased allowance was a necessity on her part.