The Duke, after an earnest expostulation in reply to this letter, suspended his remonstrances, calmly awaiting the current of events by which we are carried along in life, often independent of our free wills. He remained abroad all the summer, endeavouring to draw his affairs in Holland to a close, and solacing his wearied and vexed spirit with the hopes of one day enjoying in tranquillity the shades of Woodstock. Much of his time and thoughts was devoted to the completion and decoration of that magnificent palace, destined for two as gifted beings and stately inhabitants as ever trod its banquet-hall. In the midst of war, and, what harassed him far more, of politics, he turned with almost youthful delight to the minutiæ of those preparations for his luxurious home, which had in his mind an association with a deep-felt sentiment. “My glasses,” he writes from Meldert, “are come, and I have bespoke the hangings; for one of my greatest pleasures is in doing all that in me lies, that we may as soon as possible enjoy that happy time of being quietly together, which I think of with pleasure, as often as I have my thoughts free to myself.”[127] And when the Duchess, in her letters, responded to these sentiments, his pleasure was blended with affectionate gratitude. “I am obliged to you for your kind expression concerning Woodstock; it is certainly a pleasure to me when I hear the work goes on, for it is there I must be happy with you. The greatest pleasure I have, when I am alone, is the thinking of this, and flattering myself that we may then live so as to anger neither God nor men, if the latter be reasonable; but if they are otherways, I shall not much care, if _you_ are pleased, and that I do my duty to God; for ambition and business is what after this war shall be abandoned by me.”[128] The Duke wrote habitually in this strain; but of late, the hollowness of those whose personal advancement constitutes the sole business of their lives, had been painfully manifested to him. Since the knowledge of the Duchess’s downfal had become general, her failings, and the defects of the whole “Marlburghian faction,” as it has been called by a contemporary writer, constituted the subject of general conversation; “being,” says the caustic, but not dispassionate Cunningham, “bandied about the town by gossiping women, and by them greedily sucked in; whilst the inexperienced multitude, who, for the most part, look with envy on the grandeur and good fortune of their superiors, rejoiced at the Duchess of Marlborough’s disgrace, and began to carry themselves with great insolence, as if any one of themselves were to have succeeded her in the Queen’s favour.”[129]