"Enough to pay for my board only," was my reply. "Nor do I require bonds or signatures. The duke is a gentleman, and will take care that the person who has complied with all his wishes shall not come to want. Of that I am well satisfied."
Robinson told me to fear nothing, and down I went into Devonshire, where I might have wanted bread, without obtaining a shilling or an answer to any one of my letters addressed to His Grace, had I not, after waiting four or five months, been obliged to threaten that I would join Worcester in Spain. This, and this only, brought a polite letter, enclosing two quarters of the promised allowance, from His Grace.
I should like to know if His Grace or his noble son will take upon them to deny any of these facts, or that he did not desire me to make my own terms if I would not marry Worcester? and for which, all the world are crying "Off! Off! Off!" to the Duke of Beaufort, just as if he were Kean the actor. At all events, the facts I am now proceeding to relate were public.
Neither Brougham nor Treslove could be induced to believe that, since the Duke of Beaufort had bestowed a small annuity on me for the purpose of separating me from Lord Worcester, it could ever be His Grace's wish to rob me of that annuity, while the intent and purpose of it was fulfilled. I had indeed written a few lines to Lord Worcester, trusting to their humanity to forgive me for the exercise of mine; but, since my letter did not interrupt the object of the bond, which was to separate us, nobody would believe that the duke wished to throw on the world, me, who might have been his daughter, without the means of existence.
"The duke will prefer giving you fifty thousand pounds," said the duke's attorney to me.
My answer was, "Were I selfish, I would marry Worcester."
To satisfy these incredulous gentlemen, I renewed my applications to His Grace; but they were unattended to, as before.
As the day of trial drew near, I expressed my astonishment to my legal advisers that they wished me to bring forward a case like this, which I must inevitably lose if Lord Worcester produced the letter I wrote to him, which was directly in the teeth of the conditions of the bond.
"Fear nothing," was Brougham's answer. "Lord Worcester cannot appear in it without irremediable disgrace and loss of character."