When the Duchess could no longer doubt the mortifying truth, she communicated the fact to her friend, Lord Godolphin, and to her husband, then abroad. Marlborough wearied with these, as he considered them, petty dissensions, wrote a somewhat stern letter to his wife. The great soldier was annoyed and distressed at the details of paltry wrongs which he was obliged to hear, and grown impatient, forgot that sometimes,-- "Dire events from little causes spring;" he did not contemplate his own, his wife's, and his friend's disgrace, from the contemptible quarrels among the women about the court. "If you have good reasons," he writes, "for what you write of the kindness and esteem the Queen has for Mrs. Masham and Mr. Harley, my opinion should be, that my Lord Treasurer and I should tell her Majesty what is good for herself; and if that will not prevail, to be quiet, and to let Mr. Harley and Mrs. Masham do what they please; for I own I am quite tired, and if the Queen can be safe I shall be glad. I hope the Lord Treasurer will be of my mind; and then we shall be much happier than by being in a perpetual struggle." At length the mask of affected humility assumed by Mrs. Masham was thrown off entirely; and, confident in the support of her royal mistress, the upstart favourite exhibited all the scorn and insolence which was in her nature. The Duchess expatiates with feminine pertinacity upon the stinging impertinences and insulting condescensions she had to endure from her lately exalted cousin. One instance she dwells on with bitter recollection, for it was the first time the minion of the Queen had dared to show her how little she regarded her. When having with difficulty obtained an interview with Mrs. Masham, the Duchess upbraided her with her treachery, and observed, that she was certain no good intentions towards herself could have influenced her actions, Abigail replied:-- "... very gravely, that she was sure the Queen, who had always loved me extremely, would _always be very kind to me_. I was some minutes before I could recover from the surprise with which so extraordinary an answer struck me. To see a woman whom I had raised out of the dust put on such a superior air, and to hear her assure me, by way of consolation, that the Queen would always be very kind to me!--I was stunned to hear her say so strange a thing!" The Duchess of Marlborough was now, therefore, at open variance with her cousin. Towards her Majesty she stood in a predicament the most curious and unprecedented that perhaps ever existed between sovereign and subject. The amused and astonished court beheld Anne cautiously creeping out of that subjection in which the Duchess had, according to her enemies, long held the timid sovereign.