pension of L7,500 a year (ten times as much as had
long contented her well in Hanover); and when valuable posts fell vacant
she induced him to leave them vacant and to give her the revenues.

Not content with filling her capacious pockets, she sighed for
coronets--and got them in showers. Four Irish Peerages, from Baroness of
Dundalk to Duchess of Munster, were flung into her lap. And yet she was
not happy. She must have English coronets, and the best of them. So
George made her Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and
Duchess of Kendal. And, to crown her ambition for such baubles, he
induced the pliant German Emperor to make her a Princess--of Eberstein.
Thus, with coffers overflowing with ill-gotten gold, her towering head
graced with a dazzling variety of coronets, this grim idol of a King,
who at sixty was as much her slave as in the twenties, was the proudest
woman in England, patronising our own Duchesses, and snubbing Peeresses
of less degree. She might be a "maypole"--hated and unattractive--but at
least she towered high above all the fairest and most blue-blooded
beauties of her "Consort's" Court.

When the South Sea Bubble rose to dazzle all eyes with its iridescent
splendours, it was she more than any other who blew it. She was the
witch behind the scenes of the South Sea and many another bubble
Company, whether its object was to "carry on a thing that will turn to
the advantage of the concerned," "the breeding and providing for natural
children," or "for planting mulberries in Chelsea Park to breed
silk-worms."

Every day of this wild, insane gamble, which wrecked thousands of homes,
and filled hundreds of suicides' graves, brought its stream of gold to
her exchequer; and when the bubbles burst in havoc and ruin she smiled
and counted her gains, turning a deaf ear to the storm of execration
that raged against her outside the palace walls. She knew that she had
played her cards so skilfully that all the popular rage was impotent to
harm her. Only one of her many puppets--Knight, the Treasurer of the
South Sea Company--could be the means of doing her harm. If he were
arrested and told all he knew, impeachment would probably follow, with a
sentence of imprisonment and banishment. But the crafty German was much
too old a bird to be caught in that way. She packed Knight off to
Antwerp; and, through the influence of her friend, the German Empress,
the States of Brabant refused to give him up to his f