reading to me, when the Queen's Ladies rushed in, with a torrent
of domestics in the rear; who all bawled out, putting one knee to
the ground, 'They were come to salute the Princess of Wales.'
I fairly believed these poor people had lost their wits;
they would not cease overwhelming me with noise and tumult, their
joy was so great they knew not what they did. When the farce had
lasted some time, they at last told me"--what our readers know.
What the demure Wilhelmina professes she cared next to nothing
about. "I was so little moved by it, that I answered, going on
with my work, 'Is that all?' Which greatly surprised them.
A while afterwards my Sisters and several Ladies came also to
congratulate me. I was much loved; and I felt more delighted at
the proofs each gave me of that than at what occasioned them.
In the evening I went to the Queen's: you may readily conceive her
joy. On my first entrance, she called me 'her dear Princess of
Wales;' and addressed Madam de Sonsfeld as 'Milady.' This latter
took the liberty of hinting to her, that it would be better to
keep quiet; that the King having yet given no notice of this
business, might be provoked at such demonstration, and that the
least trifle could still ruin all her hopes. The Countess
Finkenstein joining her remonstrances to Sonsfeld's, the Queen,
though with regret, promised to moderate herself."
[Wilhelmina, i. 215.]

This is the effulgent flaming-point of the long-agitated English
Match, which we have so often caught in a bitterly smoking
condition. "The King indeed spoke nothing of it to us, on his
return to Berlin in a day or two," says Wilhelmina; "which we
thought strange." But everybody considered it certain, nothing but
the details left to settle. "Hotham had daily conferences with the