The Duchess, meantime, before resigning her offices, made one effort more to win back the Queen’s lost regard, or at any rate to efface from her Majesty’s mind every impression unfavourable to her. She had heard that Anne was given to understand that she spoke disrespectfully of her in company; and as she knew herself to be innocent of this charge, she waited on her Majesty on the third of April, 1710, and entreated to be favoured with a private interview. Three several hours were named by the Duchess, when she knew her Majesty to be usually alone; but the Queen appointed six o’clock in the afternoon, the time for prayers, when there was little probability of finding her Majesty at home for any private conversation. But even this appointment was broken, and a note was sent from the Queen, to command that whatever the Duchess should have to say, should be put into writing, “and to beg her to gratify herself by going into the country as soon as she could.” The Duchess waited on the Queen, and used all the arguments she could to obtain a private hearing, adding, “that she was now going out of town for a long time, and should perhaps never have occasion to trouble her Majesty again as long as she lived.” The Queen still refused her request several times, “in a manner hard to be described,” but yielded, so far as to appoint the next day after dinner: yet, on the following morning, this appointment was broken also, and another note from her Majesty arrived, telling the Duchess that she was going to Kensington to dinner, and desiring her to put her thoughts in writing. These weak pretexts either prove that Harley and Mrs. Masham still dreaded a revival of the long-asserted influence which they had successfully combated, and that Anne was the undignified tool of their manœuvres—or they betray the Queen’s dread of again encountering the earnest, and, doubtless, violent disputant, whose “commands” in the chapel royal were still fresh in the royal memory. Stouter nerves than those of the weak and harassed Queen may have been shaken by the lofty, and at times not very courteous demeanour of the Duchess. Persevering in her attempt, the Duchess again wrote to the Queen, and again pressed an interview, assuring her Majesty that she would give her no uneasiness, but only clear herself from charges which had been wrongfully made against her; adding, that if the afternoon were not inconvenient, she would come every day and wait until her Majesty would allow her an interview. The particulars of this remarkable scene would lose much of the diversion which they must necessarily produce, if given in any other language than in that of the chief actor in the comedy.[163]