niece had been partly educated by Newton; she had lived in his
house; we know of no other protector that she could have had, in London;
and the supposition that she left any roof except Newton's to take shelter
under that of Montague, would be purely gratuitous. She was unmarried,
beautiful, and gay; and probably not so much as, certainly not much more
then, twenty years old. A handsome annuity was bought for her in Newton's
name, and held in trust by Halifax: if it had been bought _by Newton_,
Conduitt would have mentioned it in his list of the benefactions which
Newton's relatives received from him, especially after the publicity which
it had obtained from Halifax's will. That she did not tenant the
housekeeper's room while the friends of Halifax were round his table, may
be inferred from the epigrams, poor as they are, which were made in her
honour as a celebrated beauty and wit, in a collection of verses (reprinted
in Dryden's _Miscellanies_) on the best known toasts of the day. Halifax
bequeathed her a provision which might have suited his widow, in terms
which must have been intended to show that she had been either his wife or
his mistress; while in the same document he brought prominently forward his
respect for Newton, the fact of her being Newton's niece, and the annuity
which he had bought for her in Newton's name. An uncontradicted paragraph
in the life of Halifax, published immediately after the will, and evidently
not intended to bring forward any fact not perfectly well known, records
her residence in the house of that nobleman and the consequent rumours
concerning her character, affirms that she was a virtuous woman, and refers
to the will to prove it: though the will denies it in the plainest English,
on any supposition except that of a private marriage. Finally, the lady
married a respectable man after the death of Lord Halifax, and lived with
him in the house of her illustrious uncle.

That she was either the wife or the mistress of Halifax, I take to be
established; it is the natural conclusion from the facts above stated, all
made public during her life, all left uncontradicted by herself, by her
husband, by her daughter, by Lord Lymington her son-in-law, and by the
uncle who had stood to her in the place of a father. It is impossible that
Newton could have been ignorant that his niece was living in Montague's
house, enjoyed an annuity bought in his own name, and was regarded by the
world as the mistr