The episode in her life, I am about to relate, is curious, and I have endeavoured to take the most temperate authorities on the subject, so that, whilst being contemporaneous, they are, as far as one can judge, historically unbiassed. She could have had no love for her father, for his failings were of public notoriety, and he never lavished any of his affection upon her. Her mother, too--badly brought up in a petty German Court, where licence was familiar--had, certainly, been indiscreet. Her Peers absolved her from anything worse than indiscretion, and I, who have studied her life, and written it (not as it appears in the "Dictionary of National Biography," for, there, it has been maimed, editorially), thoroughly endorse their verdict. Of course, her public life began on her attaining her 18th year, when she legally became of age. Her mother wished, very naturally, to present her to the Queen, as launching her in life; but the Queen had a son, the father of Mademoiselle, who was not on good terms with his wife; and, although mother and son were not the best possible friends, still the probability is, that grandmamma thought that papa was best judge of his daughter's welfare, and therefore backed up the stern parent. _Ergo_, Mamma was nowhere, and went abroad, having an increased allowance, which she would not touch. The _imprimatur_ of a young lady's life, in Court circles, is, naturally, her presentation at Court; with men, it differs. I recollect a tailor, in Fenchurch Street, being presented--the Lord knows why, probably because he made the clothes for the Lord Mayor's footmen. But this case was different--this was the heiress to the throne--a _personnage_, of whom there could be no doubt. Her mother was not a _persona gratissima_ at Court; and although she used to spend somewhat dreary days with Grandmamma Charlotte, and her Aunts at Windsor, she had not yet been presented legally, nor had she yet achieved the other grand step in her young life, and natural ambition of her sex, that of obtaining a husband. She got a godmother, for her presentation, in the shape of the good fairy, the Duchess of Oldenburgh. I have not been able to unravel what this lady's mission was, but I know that both she and her brother backed up the suit of the Prince of Orange as husband to the coming Queen of England. This Drawing Room took place on June 2nd, and the Princess started for the first time as "the Daughter of England," and went, in more than Cinderella state, in an elegant State Carriage--all her own--with splendid hammer Cloth of Scarlet and Gold, with the Royal Arms, and Union Wreath richly embroidered in the centre on White Satin. New harness of black leather and raised brass; three footmen, and a brand new coachman, all in brand new liveries. For the first time in her life she was somebody; for, let alone all this magnificence, she was assisted into her carriage by her would-be _fiancé_, the Prince of Orange.