But if she was coy and cold before, she was unapproachable now.  In vain did he vow that he had never ceased to love her more than life—­that he adored her even more now in her anger than in her indifference.

“I vow to God,” he wrote, “you do so entirely possess my thoughts that I think of nothing else in this world but your dear self.  I do not, by all that is good, say this that I think it will move you to pity me, for I do despair of your love, but it is to let you see how unjust you are, and that I must ever love you as long as I have breath, do what you will.  I do not expect in return that you should either write or speak to me.  I beg that you will give me leave to do what I cannot help, which is to adore you as long as I live; and in return I will study how I may deserve, though not have, your love.”

Was ever lover more abject, or ever maid so hard of heart, at least in seeming?  To this pathetic effusion, which ought to have melted the heart of, and at least wrung forgiveness from, a sphinx, she retorted that he had merely written it to amuse himself, and to “make her think that he had an affection for her when she was assured he had none.”  At last, however, importunity tells its tale.  She consents to see him; but warns him that

“if it be only to repeat those things which you have said so often, I shall think you the worst of men and the most ungrateful; and ’tis to no purpose to imagine that I will be made ridiculous to the world.”

Still again she gave signs of thawing.  To his next letter, in which he wrote: 

     “I do love and adore you with all my heart and soul, so
     much that by all that is good, I do and ever will be
     better pleased with your happiness than my own,”

she answered: 

“If it were sure that you have that passion for me which you say you have, you would find out some way to make yourself happy—­it is in your power.  Therefore press me no more to see you, since it is what I cannot in honour approve of; and if I have done so much, be as good as to consider who was the cause of it.”

At last Churchill had received a crumb of real encouragement.  Even the veriest poltroon in love must take heart at such words as these—­“you would find out some way to make yourself happy—­it is in your power.”  And it was with a light step and buoyant heart that he went the following day to the Duchess’s drawing-room to pursue in person the advantage her letter suggested.  But the very moment he entered the room by one door his capricious mistress left it by the other; and when, in his anger at such cavalier treatment, he wrote to ask the meaning of it, and if she did not think it impertinent, she left him in no doubt by answering that she did it “that I may be freed from the trouble of ever hearing from you more!”

Once more Churchill, just as he had begun to hope again, was relegated to the shades of despair.  She refused to speak to him, she avoided him in a manner so marked that it became the talk of the Court, and brought her lover into ridicule.  To such extremity was he reduced that he actually wrote to her maid to beg her intercession.