As for her small Majesty of Portugal, she was at that time a Queen without a crown and without a kingdom. She had come all the way from Brazil to take her grandfather's throne, a little present from her father, Dom Pedro I., the rightful heir, but only to find the place filled by a wicked uncle, Don Miguel. She had a long fight with the usurper, her father coming over to help her, and finally ousted Miguel and got into that big, uneasy arm-chair, called a throne, where she continued to sit, though much shaken and heaved up and about by political convulsions, for some dozen years, when she found it best to step down and out. It is said she did not gain, but lost in beauty as she grew to womanhood; so finally the English Princess had the advantage of her in the matter of good looks even. King George IV., though he was fond of his amusing little niece, did not like to think of her as destined to rule in his place. He is said to have been much offended when, as he was proposing to give that ball, his chief favorite, a gay, Court lady, exclaimed: "Oh, do! it will be so nice to see the _two little Queens_ dancing together." Yet he disliked the Duchess of Kent for keeping the child as much as possible away from his disreputable Court, and educating her after her own ideas, and often threatened to use his power as King to deprive her of the little girl. The country would not have stood this, yet the Duchess must have suffered cruelly from fear of having her darling child taken from her by this crowned ogre, and shut up in the gloomy keep of his Castle at Windsor. But it was the Ogre-King who was taken, a little more than a year after the children's ball--and not a day too soon for his country's good--and his brother, the Duke of Clarence, reigned in his stead. William IV. had some heart, some frankness and honesty, but he was a bluff, rough sailor, and when excited, oaths of the hottest sort flew from his lips, like sparks from an anvil. Because of his roughness and profanity, and because, perhaps, of the fact of his surrounding himself with a lot of natural children, the Duchess was determined to persevere in her retirement from the Court circle, and in keeping her innocent little daughter out of its unwholesome atmosphere, as much as possible. She was, however, most friendly with Queen Adelaide, who, when her last child died, had written to her: "My children are dead, but yours lives, and she is mine too." The good woman meant this, and her fondness was returned by Victoria, who manifested for her to the last, filial affection and consideration.