Lola herself was under no misapprehension as to the cause and authors of her defeat. She wrote to the _Era_ on 13th June, protesting passionately against a report that was being circulated to the effect that she had long been known in London as a disreputable character. She positively asserted that she was a native of Seville, and had never before been in London. She complains of the cruel calumnies that had got abroad concerning her, and says that she has instructed her lawyer to prosecute their utterers. Of course, the greater part of this statement was untrue, but she had her back against the wall, and with their reputation, social and professional, and means of livelihood at stake, few women would have acted otherwise. My own view is that after her affair with Lennox, Lola tried hard "to keep straight," and made powerful enemies in consequence. The alliance of Pecksniff and Sir Mulberry proved too strong for her.
London, then, was closed to Lola. She was recognised, and for the divorced wife of Lieutenant James there were no prospects of a career. Her defeat determined her to aim higher, not lower, as most women would have done. In the English country towns she would have been quite unknown, and might have earned a modest competence. But her experience of Montrose and Meath did not predispose her towards the provincial atmosphere. Devoting England and its serpent seed to the infernal gods, she took wing to Brussels. So rapidly were her preparations made that when "Q." called the very morning after the "frost" at Her Majesty's at her apartments in Grafton Street, he found her gone--none knew whither. We must feel sorry for our anonymous friend, for it is evident from his confessions that Lola's blue eyes had bored a big hole in his heart. He consoled himself for her loss by writing (I suspect) some of the flattering notices on her performance to which reference has been made.
It is impossible to trace his enchantress's movements in their proper sequence during the next nine or ten months (June 1843 to March 1844). We find her at Brussels, Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw, and St. Petersburg. She reached the Belgian capital practically with an empty purse. She afterwards said[5] that she went there partly because she had not enough money wherewith to go to Paris, partly because she hoped to make her way on to The Hague. She proposed to lay siege to the heart of his Dutch Majesty William II., then a man fifty-one years of age. She had, quite probably, met his son, the Prince of Orange, who was visiting Lord Auckland about the time she was at Simla, and had heard tales in Calcutta about the Dutch Court. The House of Orange has not been fortunate in its domestic relations. It is said that during the last king's first experience of wedlock, the heads of chamberlains often intercepted the books aimed by the Royal spouses at each other, while the whole palace re-echoed with the slamming of doors and the crash of crockery. William II., though not possessed of the reputation of his son and grandson, the celebrated "_Citron_," was known to be on bad terms with his Russian wife, Anna Pavlovna. He seemed to Lola a promising subject for the exercise of her powers of fascination. The design, if she ever really entertained it, was not one that moralists could applaud, but in extenuation it must be urged that Lola's late defeat could not have encouraged her to persevere in the path of virtue. However, the Dutch project came to nothing, and the display of our heroine's statecraft was reserved for another capital and another day.