Before I resume the thread of my narration give me leave to make some reflection upon what I have been last saying to you.  When I met with the Duke of Ormond at his return from the coast, he thought himself obliged to say something to excuse his keeping me out of a secret which during his absence I had been let into.  His excuse was that the Regent had exacted from him that I should know nothing of the matter.  You will observe that the account which I have given you seems to contradict this assertion of his Grace, since it is hard to suppose that if the Regent had exacted that I should be kept out of the secret, these women would have dared to have let me into it, and since it is still harder to suppose that the Regent would make this express condition with the Duke of Ormond, and the moment the duke’s back was turned would suffer these women to tease him from me and to bring me answers from him.  I am, however, far from taxing the duke with affirming an untruth.  I believe the Regent did make such a condition with him; and I will tell you how I understand all this little management, which will explain a great deal to you.  This Prince, with wit and valour, has joined all the irresolution of temper possible, and is, perhaps, the man in the world the least capable of saying “no” to your face.  From hence it happened that these women, like multitudes of other people, forced him to say and do enough to give them the air of having credit with him and of being trusted by him.  This drew in the Duke of Ormond, who is not, I daresay, as yet undeceived.  The Regent never intended from the first to do anything, even indirectly, in favour of the Jacobite cause.  His interest was plainly on the other side, and he saw it.  But then the same weakness in his character carried him, as it would have done his great-uncle Gaston in the same case, to keep measures with the Chevalier.  His double-trimming character prevailed on him to talk with the Duke of Ormond, but it carried him no farther.  I question not but he did, on this occasion, what you must have observed many men to do:  we not only endeavour to impose on the world, but even on ourselves; we disguise our weakness, and work up in our minds an opinion that the measure which we fall into by the natural or habitual imperfection of our character is the effect of a principle of prudence or of some other virtue.  Thus the Regent, who saw the Duke of Ormond because he could not resist the importunity of Olive Trant, and who gave hopes to the duke because he can refuse nobody, made himself believe that it was a great strain of policy to blow up the fire and to keep Britain embroiled.  I am persuaded that I do not err in judging that he thought in this manner, and here I fix the reason of his excluding me out of the commerce which he had with the Duke of Ormond, of his affecting a personal dislike of me, and of his avoiding any correspondence with me upon these matters, till I forced myself in