“I think everyone should _own_ their fault in a kind way to anyone, be he or she the lowest--if one has been rude to or injured them by word or deed, especially those below you. People will readily forget an insult or an injury when others _own_ their fault, and express sorrow or regret at what they have done.”--_Queen Victoria._ It was in 1839 that the most sad and regrettable event in the personal story of Queen Victoria’s reign took place, the affair known as the Lady Flora Hastings Scandal. Lady Flora, who was the eldest daughter of the Marquis of Hastings and of Lady Hastings--Countess of Loudoun in her own right--had been Lady in Waiting to the Duchess of Kent since 1834. Her name occurs as attending the Duchess at all Royal functions, and there was a feeling of real affection between her mistress and herself. In 1839 she was thirty-three years of age, a woman who had proved her uprightness and sincerity, yet, because of dissension at Court, because of the curious friction between the Queen and her mother, she was subjected to the bitterest calumnies. Ever since her accession the gulf between the Queen and the Duchess had been widening, and there can be little doubt that Lehzen on the one hand and Conroy on the other were the people who, willingly or otherwise, were the cause of this. Victoria seems to have put the Baroness so high in her regard as to give her the place which the Duchess, with every justice and right, should have held. This was shown publicly as well as privately, for I have seen a paragraph in one paper of the day, that is to say of January, 1839, commenting upon the fact that the Queen had been three times to the theatre, accompanied on each occasion by the Baroness Lehzen, but not at all by the Duchess. The two Royal ladies lived, it is true, in the same house, and the Queen’s mother attended the Royal dinner table, and sat in the drawing-room afterwards with her daughter’s guests; but beyond that they were drifting towards a real and painful separation. The stories of Lehzen’s rudeness to the Duchess were not without foundation, and her spite against the Conroy family had in no way abated; thus, as Lady Flora was friendly with the Conroys and was regarded as one of the “set” around the Duchess she also was not much in favour. In all quarrels there is some exaggeration, and some imagination as well as some truth; there is also generally great difficulty in justly deciding who is to blame; therefore it was only natural at the time that there should have been many who believed the calumnies against Lady Flora in spite of all the evidence in her favour. But to-day it is quite certain that she is fully exculpated, that she alone comes out of the trouble with honour.