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,"
"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.