In this narrative will it be unwelcome to you, if I subjoin a faithful portrait of the heroine of this part? lady Suffolk was of a just height, well made, extremely fair, with the finest light brown hair; was remarkably genteel, and always well dressed with taste and simplicity.  Those were her personal charms, for her face was regular and agreeable rather than beautiful and those charms she retained with little diminution to her death at the age of seventy-nine. (111) Her mental qualifications were by no means shining; her eyes and countenance showed her character, which was grave and mild.  Her strict love of truth and her accurate memory were always in unison, and made her too circumstantial on trifles.  She was discreet without being reserved; and having no bad qualities, and being constant to her connexions, she preserved uncommon respect to the end of her life; and from the propriety and decency of her behaviour was always treated as if her virtue had never been questioned; her friends even affecting to suppose, that her connexion with the King had been confined to pure friendship.  Unfortunately, his Majesty’s passions were too indelicate to have been confined to Platonic love for a woman who was deaf, (112)-sentiments he had expressed in a letter to the Queen, who, however jealous of Lady Suffolk, had latterly dreaded the King’s contracting a new attachment to a younger rival, and had prevented Lady Suffolk from leaving the court as early as she had wished to do.  “I don’t know,” said his Majesty, “why you will not let me part with an old deaf woman, of whom I am weary.”

Her credit had always been extremely limited by the Queen’s superior influence, and by the devotion of the minister to her Majesty.  Except a barony, a red riband, and a good place for her brother, Lady Suffolk could succeed but in very subordinate recommendations.  Her own acquisitions were so moderate, that, besides Marble Hill, which cost the King ten or twelve thousand pounds, her complaisance had not been too dearly purchased.  She left the court with an income so little to be envied, that, though an economist and not expensive, by the lapse of some annuities on lives not so prolonged as her own she found herself straitened; and, besides Marble Hill, did not at most leave twenty thousand pounds to her family.  On quitting court, she married Mr. George Berkeley, and outlived him. (113)

No established mistress of a sovereign ever enjoyed less of the brilliancy of the situation than Lady Suffolk.  Watched and thwarted by the Queen, disclaimed by the minister, she owed to the dignity of her own behaviour, and to the contradiction of their enemies, the chief respect that was paid to her, and which but ill compensated for the slavery of her attendance, and the mortifications she endured.  She was elegant; her lover the reverse, and most unentertaining, and void of confidence in her.  His motions too were measured by etiquette and the clock.  He visited her every evening at nine; but with such dull punctuality, that he frequently walked about his chamber for ten minutes with his watch in his hand, if the stated minute was not arrived.