The Queen, unsentimental though well intentioned, plunged deeper and deeper into petty political intrigues, after the respectable occupation of tending her invalid husband was at an end. Her grief was as edifying as her conjugal affection had been exemplary; yet the parliament, not thinking it too late for such addresses, petitioned her Majesty that she would not allow her grief for the Prince’s death to prevent her from contemplating a second marriage. But Anne continued to be, or, as some said, to seem inconsolable. She avoided the light of day, and could not endure the conversation of her dearest friends, but seemed, as in affliction it is natural so to do, to revert to those companions of her earlier years who had witnessed the felicity of her married life. Several weeks had elapsed since the Queen and the Duchess had met, when the latter was apprised that the existence of the Prince of Denmark was drawing to a close. The Duchess, warm in her temper, warm in her feelings, wrote on this occasion to her royal mistress to express her determination to pay her duty, in inquiring after her Majesty’s health, and to declare that she could not hear of so great a misfortune and affliction as the condition in which the Prince was, without offering her services, if acceptable to her Majesty. This letter was scarcely penned, before further tidings of the Prince’s danger arrived; and the Duchess, setting off for Kensington, carried her letter with her, and sent it to the Queen, with a message that she waited her Majesty’s commands. Anne could scarcely be much flattered by a tribute of respect, which was prefaced by the Duchess with these offensive words:—“Though, the last time I had the honour to wait upon your Majesty, your usage of me was such as was scarce possible for me to imagine, or for any one to believe,” &c. &c. She received her haughty subject “coolly, and as a stranger.” The Duchess, however, touched by her royal mistress’s impending calamity, persevered. It was her lot, after witnessing the nuptials of the Queen with the Prince of Denmark, and after participating for years in their sober privacy, to be present at his last moments. It was her office to lead the Queen from the chamber of death into her closet, where, kneeling down, the Duchess endeavoured affectionately to console the widowed sovereign, remaining for some time before her in that posture of humiliation.