But there had happened circumstances still more pressing, more alarming. The King was fallen in love with Lady Sarah Lenox, sister of the Duke of Richmond; a very young lady of the most blooming beauty, and shining with all the graces of unaffected, but animated nature. What concurred to make her formidable to the mother and Favourite, was, her being under the tutorage of Mr. Fox, her eldest sister’s[98] husband; and in truth, she and her family spared no assiduity to fix the young monarch’s heart. And though Fox would probably not have been scrupulous or delicate on the terms of cementing that union, the King’s overtures were so encouraging, that Fox’s views extended even to placing the young lady on the throne. Early in the winter, the King told Lady Susan Strangways,[99] Mr. Fox’s niece, and the confidant of Lady Sarah, that he hoped she (Lady Susan) would not go out of town soon. She said, she should. “But,” replied the King, “you will return in summer, for the coronation?” Lady Susan answered, “I do not know; I hope so.” “But,” said the King again, “they talk of a wedding. There have been many proposals; but I think an English match would do better than a foreign one. Pray, tell Lady Sarah Lenox I say so.” The next time Lady Sarah went to Court (and her family took care that should not be seldom) the King said, “he hoped Lady Susan had told her his last conversation.” The Junto was not blind to these whispers and dialogues. Lady Bute was instructed to endeavour to place herself in the circle, and prevent them. And the Princess Augusta marked her observation of what was going forward to Lady Sarah herself, laughing in her face, and trying to affront her. But Fox was not to be so rebuffed. Though he went himself to bathe in the sea (possibly to disguise his intrigues), he left Lady Sarah at Holland House,[100] where she appeared every morning in a field close to the great road (where the King passed on horseback) in a fancied habit, making hay. Such mutual propensity fixed the resolution of the Princess. One Colonel Graeme was despatched in the most private manner as a traveller, and vested with no character, to visit various little Protestant Courts, and make report of the qualifications of the several unmarried Princesses. Beauty, and still less, talents, were not, it is likely, the first object of his instructions. On the testimony of this man, the golden apple was given to the Princess of Mecklenburg; and the marriage precipitately concluded. The ambassador was too remarkable not to be farther mentioned. This Graeme, then, was a notorious Jacobite, and had been engaged in the late rebellion. On a visit he made to Scotland, his native country, after this embassy, David Hume, the historian, said to him, “Colonel Graeme, I congratulate you on having exchanged the dangerous employment of making Kings, for the more lucrative province of making Queens.”