"Why are you disturbed?" she said. "Please tell me what is wrong. Come and sit here, beside me, my dear. I do not like to see you look so worried.”

The Princess's servants had all discreetly disappeared as they had been doing for years on the arrival of her lover; and they could be sure of privacy.

"A most disturbing letter from the King. He does not wish to see me any more.”

"Oh, no.”

"It is true. Here it is.”

The Princess read it and made clucking noises. "George is a fool!" she said "He was always and always will be. He has no idea how to be a King.”

"He is developing those ideas," retorted Bute.

"He now believes he knows how to be a certain kind of king and, by God, he is going to be that kind of king. He has grown very stubborn. He makes up his mind and once it has been made up nothing on earth will shift him. And ... he has turned against me.”

"Something happened to George during that illness of his," mused the Princess.

"He has grown very odd. That abrupt way of speaking ... It's almost irascible. He was never like that before. He was rather slow and even stuttered now and then. The illness has changed his personality, I fear. But perhaps he will change again and become more like his old self.”

Bute shook his head. "I do not think he will. He seems to have taken a great dislike to me and when I think of the affection he once had for me ...”

"My dear, he is ungrateful; but we have each other.”

"I was afraid that he might attempt to stop my visiting you.”

"That is something I would never allow.”

Bute smiled and turning to her embraced her warmly. But he was thinking, a great deal of the excitement had gone out of the relationship. Now they were almost like a staid old married couple.

When he left the Princess Dowager, Lord Bute called on Miss Vansittart, a young lady of good family who had been extremely pretty and still was, although she was no longer young. But she was still much younger than Lord Bute, who was over fifty.

She received him with pleasure and without surprise for in fact he had been calling on her for some time, finding her company a change after that of the Princess Dowager. Miss Vansittart was humble and admired him whole-heartedly. She made no demands and that was very pleasant. First they had talked and then it seemed so natural that they should become lovers in a quiet rather desultory way, which suited her nature and Lord Bute's declining years.

He told her that the King had turned against him and she was incredulous that the King could be so lacking in gratitude. She soothed him and he told her that the Princess Dowager was as devoted to him as ever and that theirs was too strong a relationship for the King to stop it, although he might try. Who but I trust the Princess. She would never wish to part from me.

Miss Vansittart plainly adored him and he told her that he would speak to the Princess, and when there was a vacancy in her household it should go to Miss Vansittart.

Miss Vansittart shivered with delight at the prospect of serving the woman who for so many years had been a wife in all but name, to the wonderful Lord Bute; and he soothed the hurt the King had done him by basking in her admiration and explaining to her all the perquisites which fell into the laps of those who served in royal households. She would learn, for he would teach her, how to come by these rewards. When he left her he felt better, but when he returned to his house his wife, that most accommodating of women, demanded to know if he had been visiting Miss Vansittart.

He admitted this was so, for since she had never complained of his relationship with the Princess Dowager why should she with Miss Vansittart? But it seemed this was different.

"This will have to stop," she told him. "This woman is no Princess Dowager. This is quite a different matter.”

"I believe you are jealous," replied his lordship.

"Of course I'm jealous.”

"Of this poor young woman?”

"Exactly. What has this poor young woman to offer but herself? With the Princess Dowager it was different.”

"What a sordid view," he commented with distaste. But his wife laughed at him and said that she was not prepared to have to listen to gossip about her husband and Miss Vansittart.

Lord Bute felt melancholy. Life had ceased to smile on him.

Four days after William Pitt had received the King's letter he was asking for an audience with His Majesty.

"Bring him in, bring him in," cried George. "Don't you know I wouldn't wish Mr. Pitt to be kept waiting, eh, eh?”

So Mr. Pitt came hobbling in and the King looked at him with emotion. The greatest mistake he had ever made, thought George, was to allow Bute to persuade him to banish Mr. Pitt. But Mr.

Pitt bore no grudges. The King asked after his family and gave news of his own.

"Young George is growing more bumptious every day. Frederick is imitating his brother; and I doubt not young William will be the same. As you know, the Queen is expecting another in September, ha! Well, well, we shall soon have a quiverful, eh? What?”

Mr. Pitt, elegant in spite of his afflictions, gracious and ceremonious, made a little speech about the blessings of family life and added that the royal family set an example to all the families in the land.

This pleased George whose eyes filled with tears at the thought of his and his wife's virtues and how well they filled their roles to the glory of England. Then the conversation turned on the reason for Mr. Pitt's being in London and the King made it very clear that he placed himself in Mr. Pitt's hands. He was disappointed in the Rockingham ministry; in fact ever since Mr. Pitt had ceased to lead the Government he had been disappointed.

Pitt's eyes gleamed with triumph when he heard this. He had come prepared to compromise; now he saw that there would be no need. It would be as he, Pitt, wished it to be. He told the King that he would have great pleasure in forming a government which he would submit to His Majesty for his approval.

George warmly shook his hand and said: "It is a great relief. You understand, eh? A great relief.”

"I do understand, Sir. I trust Your Majesty will have no reason to regret your decision. Your Majesty knows full well that I shall use all my powers to make this ministry a success.”

The King said: "Yes, yes, yes. I have never doubted that, eh? What? What?”

Mr. Pitt bowed himself from the presence. The King had changed and he could not help feeling a little uneasy. The quick way of talking with the inevitable "What? What?" was already being noticed. And the change had come with his recent indisposition ... that mysterious illness which no one quite understood, and about which there were so many rumours. A Regency? thought Pitt.

He grimaced inwardly. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. He would deal with such a contingency when and if it arose. In the meantime he had carte blanche to form a ministry.

Pitt presented his choice of a ministry to the King and it was accepted. The First Lord of the Treasury was the Duke of Grafton a rather reckless choice perhaps, not because the Duke lacked ability and could not be trusted to support him, but because of the life he led. Descended from Charles II, Grafton had inherited many of that king's characteristics, chief of which was his love of women. His existing liaison was one of the scandals of the Court. This was with Nancy Parsons, a notorious courtesan, the daughter of a Bond Street tailor who had first lived with a West Indian merchant named Horton with whom she had gone to Jamaica; Jamaica did not suit her however and she soon returned to London where she took many lovers; chief of whom was the Duke of Grafton. The Duke's open dalliance with her he was constantly seen with her at the races and in public places his devotion to horse racing, his neglect of his wife, the mother of his three children, meant that his affairs were widely known and discussed. It was said by Horace Walpole, the wit and raconteur, that Grafton 'postponed the world for a whore and a horse race' and he went on to voice some pointed criticism against "The Duke of Grafton's Mrs. Horton, the Duke of Dorset's Mrs. Horton, everybody's Mrs. Horton." And such was the man whom Pitt had chosen to be First Lord of the Treasury.

The Lord President was the Earl of Northington; the Chancellor of the Exchequer Mr. Charles Townsend; and the position of Lord Privy Seal, Pitt reserved for himself.

When the news was out there was rejoicing through the City. Bonfires were lit in the streets. The Mayor decided that a banquet in honour of Mr. Pitt, the Great Commoner, be held at the Guildhall. There was a great deal of talk about the prosperity which Mr. Pitt had brought to the City when he had first become Prime Minister. Mr. Pitt had brought an Empire to England and the City knew that Empires meant trade and prosperity. In the streets they shouted for Mr. Pitt. They waited for his carriage; if they saw it they gathered round it, cheering. A great wave of optimism swept through London.

"Everything will be all right now," it was said. "Mr. Pitt is back.”

Sewing, reading, walking a little in her apartments at Kew, going to see the children in their nursery, receiving visits from them, the trying months of pregnancy were passing slowly for Charlotte. Though, she thought, I should be used to it by now. And there was one blessing: the more children she had the easier it became to give birth to them.

She saw little of her husband. He was occupied with the new Ministry and Mr. Pitt. When he did come to see her she asked him questions, for there was so much excitement about that matter that the news had come to Kew. She wanted to know what had brought Mr. Pitt back and what his terms had been, because she knew that he had retired from the front bench because of some disagreement with the King and the majority of his ministers.