"You will believe with what indignation, with what disgust, I
discovered that shortly after her appointment at court, she had been
persecuted with the licentious addresses of the king. It was nothing
new to me that Charles, in the selfish indulgence of his passions,
overlooked every barrier of honour and decency, but that the
unprotected innocence of the daughter of an old and faithful servant,
whose very life-blood had been poured forth in his defence, should
not have been a safeguard in his eyes, was indeed incredible and
revolting. But it was this orphan helplessness, this afflicting
destitution which marked her for his prey.
"Encompassed by the toils of the spoiler, and friendless as she was,
the unhappy Theresa knew not to whom to apply for succour or counsel;
and in this painful exigence, she could only trust to her own
discretion and purity of intention to shield her from the advances
from which she shrunk with horror. Irritated by the opposition he
encountered, and astonished by that dignity of virtue, which, 'severe
in youthful beauty,' had power to awe even a monarch in the
consciousness of guilt, the king by the most ungenerous private
scrutiny of her correspondence, made himself acquainted with her
attachment to Lord Hugh; and while she was eagerly looking for the
arrival of the ship which contained her only protector, the authority
of His Majesty prolonged its station in a distant and unhealthy
climate, where her letters did not reach him, and whence his aid
could avail her nothing.
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