Besides all this, she had greater opportunities of making advances to him than to any other:  she lived at the Duke of Ormond’s, at Whitehall, where Hamilton, as was said before, had free admittance at all hours:  her extreme coldness, or rather the disgust which she showed for her husband’s returning affection, wakened his natural inclination to jealousy:  he suspected that she could not so very suddenly pass from anxiety to indifference for him, without some secret object of a new attachment; and, according to the maxim of all jealous husbands, he immediately put in practice all his experience and industry, in order to make a discovery, which was to destroy his own happiness.

Hamilton, who knew his disposition, was, on the other hand, upon his guard, and the more he advanced in his intrigue, the more attentive was he to remove every degree of suspicion from the Earl’s mind:  he pretended to make him his confidant, in the most unguarded and open manner, of his passion for Lady Castlemaine:  he complained of her caprice, and most earnestly desired his advice how to succeed with a person whose affections he alone had entirely possessed.

Chesterfield, who was flattered with this discourse, promised him his protection with greater sincerity than it had been demanded:  Hamilton, therefore, was no further embarrassed than to preserve Lady Chesterfield’s reputation, who, in his opinion, declared herself rather too openly in his favour:  but whilst he was diligently employed in regulating, within the rules of discretion, the partiality she expressed for him, and in conjuring her to restrain her glances within bounds, she was receiving those of the Duke of York; and, what is more, made them favourable returns.

He thought that he had perceived it, as well as every one besides; but he thought likewise, that all the world was deceived as well as himself:  how could he trust his own eyes, as to what those of Lady Chesterfield betrayed for this new rival?  He could not think it probable, that a woman of her disposition could relish a man, whose manners had a thousand times been the subject of their private ridicule; but what he judged still more improbable was, that she should begin another intrigue before she had given the finishing stroke to that in which her own advances had engaged her:  however, he began to observe her with more circumspection, when he found by his discoveries, that if she did not deceive him, at least the desire of doing so was not wanting.  This he took the liberty of telling her of; but she answered him in so high a strain, and treated what he said so much like a phantom of his own imagination, that he appeared confused without being convinced:  all the satisfaction he could procure from her, was her telling him, in a haughty manner, that such unjust reproaches as his ought to have had a better foundation.

Lord Chesterfield had taken the same alarm; and being convinced, from the observations he had made, that he had found out the happy lover who had gained possession of his lady’s heart, he was satisfied; and without teasing her with unnecessary reproaches, he only waited for an opportunity to confound her, before he took his measures.