that this adventure was not altogether a fiction.

This had been sufficient to have disgraced Miss Hobart at court, and to
have totally ruined her reputation in London, had she not been, upon the
present, as well as upon a former occasion, supported by the duchess:
her royal highness pretended to treat the whole story as romantic
and visionary, or as solely arising from private pique: she chid Miss
Temple, for her impertinent credulity: turned away the governess and
her niece, for the lies with which she pretended they supported the
imposture; and did many improper things in order to re-establish Miss
Hobart's honour, which, however, she failed in accomplishing. She had
her reasons for not entirely abandoning her, as will appear in the
sequel.

Miss Temple, who continually reproached herself with injustice, with
respect to Lord Rochester, and who, upon the faith of Killegrew's word,
thought him the most Honourable man in England, was only solicitous
to find out some opportunity of easing her mind, by making him some
reparation for the rigour with which she had treated him: these
favourable dispositions, in the hands of a man of his character, might
have led to consequences of which she was not aware; but heaven did not
allow him an opportunity of profiting by them.

Ever since he had first appeared at court he seldom failed being
banished from it, at least once in the year; for whenever a word
presented itself to his pen, or to his tongue, he immediately committed
it to paper, or produced it in conversation, without any manner of
regard to the consequences the ministers, the mistresses, and even the
king himself, were frequently the subjects of his sarcasms; and had
not the prince, whom he thus treated, been possessed of one of the most
forgiving and gentle tempers, his first disgrace had certainly been his
last.

Just at the time that Miss Temple was desirous of seeing him, in order
to apologize for the uneasiness which the infamous calumnies and black
aspersions of Miss Hobart had occasioned both of them, he was forbid the
court for the third time: he departed without having seen Miss Temple,
carried the disgraced governess down with him to his country seat, and
exerted all his endeavours to cultivate in her niece some dispositions
which she had for the stage; but though she did not make the same
improvement in this line, as she had by his other instructions, after
he had entertained both the niece and the aunt fo