naive postscript before sending it, "Though _I_
wrote the letter, it was the Duke who dictated it."

Boswell, when describing a visit he paid to Inverary Castle, in
Johnson's company, gives us no very favourable impression of the
Duchess's courtesy as hostess. When the Duke conducted him to the
drawing-room and announced his name,

"the Duchess," he says, "who was sitting with her
daughter and some other ladies, took not the least
notice of me. I should have been mortified at being thus
coldly received by a lady of whom I, with the rest of the
world, have always entertained a very high admiration,
had I not been consoled by the obliging attention of the
Duke."

During dinner, when Boswell ventured to drink Her Grace's good health,
she seems equally to have ignored him. And while paying the utmost
deference and attention to Johnson, the only remark she deigned to make
to his fellow-guest was a contemptuous "I fancy you must be a
Methodist." In fairness to the Duchess it should be said that Boswell
had incurred her grave displeasure by taking part against her in the
famous Douglas Case in which she was deeply interested; and this was no
doubt the reason why for once she forgot the elementary demands of
hospitality as well as the courtesy due to her rank; and why, when
Johnson mentioned his companion by name, she answered coldly, "I know
nothing of Mr Boswell."

The Duchess saw her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, wedded to Lord
Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, a union in which she paid by a life
of misery for her mother's scheming ambition; and died in 1790, thirty
years after her sister Maria drew the last breath of her short life
behind drawn bed-curtains in her darkened room.

To Betty Gunning, the squireen's daughter, fell the unique distinction
of marrying two dukes, refusing a third, and becoming the mother of four
others, two of whom were successive Dukes of Hamilton, and two of
Argyll.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS

A century and a half ago the "Douglas cause" was a subject of hot debate
from John o' Groats to Land's End. It was discussed in Court and castle
and cottage, and was wrangled over at the street corner. It divided
families and estranged friends, so fierce was the partisanship it
generated; and so full was it of complexity and mystery that it puzzled
the heads of the wisest lawyers. England and Scotland alike were divided
into two hostile cam