I will end this with once more desiring you to consider the matter impartially, and take time for it. I do not desire an answer presently, because I would not have you give a rash one. I shall come to your drawing-room to-morrow before you play, because you know why I cannot make one; at some other time we shall reason the business calmly; which I will willingly do, or anything else that may show it shall never be my fault if we do not live kindly together; nor will I ever be other by choice but your truly loving and affectionate sister, M. R. THE PRINCESS ANNE’S ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING LETTER. Your Majesty was in the right to think your letter would be very surprising to me. For you must needs be sensible of the kindness I have for my Lady Marlborough, to know that a command from you to part with her must be the greatest mortification in the world to me; and, indeed, of such a nature, that I might well have hoped your kindness to me would have always prevented. I am satisfied she cannot have been guilty of any fault to you; and it would be extremely to her advantage if I could here repeat every word that ever she had said to me of you in her whole life. I confess it is no small addition to my trouble to find the want of your Majesty’s kindness to me upon this occasion, since I am sure I have always endeavoured to deserve it by all the actions of my life. Your care of my present condition is extremely obliging, and if you would be pleased to add to it so far as upon my account to recall your severe command, (as I must beg leave to call it, in a matter so tender to me, and so little reasonable, as I think, to be imposed upon me, that you would scarcely require it from the meanest of your subjects,) I should ever acknowledge it as a very agreeable mark of your kindness to me. And I must as freely own, that as I think this proceeding can be for no other intent than to give me a very sensible mortification, so there is no misery that I cannot readily resolve to suffer, rather than the thoughts of parting with her. If, after all this that I have said, I must still find myself so unhappy as to be farther pressed in this matter, yet your Majesty may be assured, that as my past actions have given the greatest testimony of my respect both for the King and you, so it shall always be my endeavour, wherever I am, to preserve it carefully for the time to come, as becomes Your Majesty’s Very affectionate Sister and Servant, ANNE. From the Cockpit, Feb. 6th, 1692. FROM THE PRINCESS ANNE TO THE QUEEN.