he could not summon up courage to declare his passion to the lady herself.  After turning the conversation to the Coronation, “Ah!” he exclaimed with a sigh, “there will be no Coronation until there is a Queen.”  “But why, sir?” asked Lady Susan in surprise.  “They want me to have a foreign Queen,” George answered, “but I prefer an English one; and I think your friend is the fittest person in the world to be my Queen.  Tell her so from me, will you?”

A few days later when the King met Lady Sarah, he asked:  “Has your friend given you my message?” “Yes, sir.”  “And what do you think of it?  Pray tell me frankly; for on your answer all my happiness depends.  What do you think of it?” “Nothing, sir,” Lady Sarah answered demurely, with downcast eyes.  “Pooh!” exclaimed the King, as he turned away in dudgeon, “nothing comes of nothing.”

Thus foolishly Lady Sarah turned her back on a throne, which there is small doubt might have been hers for a word.  Why that word was not spoken will always remain a mystery.  It was said that her heart had already been won by Lord Newbattle, a handsome young gallant of the Court; but what was taken for a conquest seems to have been but a passing flirtation.  How little Lord Newbattle’s heart was involved was shortly proved when, on learning that Lady Sarah had been thrown from her horse and had broken her leg, he made the heartless remark, “That will do no great harm, for her legs were ugly enough before!”

The news of this accident, however, had a very different effect on the young King, who was consumed with anxiety about the girl he still loved passionately, in spite of her coldness.  He promptly sent the Court surgeon to attend to her; kept couriers constantly travelling to and fro to bring the latest bulletins, and knew no peace until she was restored to health again.  When at last she was able to return to London he was unremitting in his attentions to her.  He was never happy apart from her; and, in fact, his intentions became so marked that his mother, the Princess-Dowager, and the ministers were reduced to despair.

Secret orders were given that the young people were never to be allowed to be together.  The Princess, indeed, carried her interference to the extent of breaking in on their conferences, and rudely laughing in Lady Sarah’s face as she led her son away.  “I felt many a time,” the insulted girl said in later years, “that I should have loved to box her ears.”  But Lady Sarah, who seems at last to have awakened to the attractions of the alliance offered to her, was not the girl to sit down tamely under such interference with her liberty.  Her spirit was aroused, and she brought all her arts of coquetry to her aid.

If she could not see the King at Court she would see him elsewhere.  When George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah, attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of rustic beauty well-calculated to make his conquest more complete.