Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/218

 throne, and yet the grand-daughter of the old king, without hearing the circumstances of my getting into debt, or whether the story is true (for it might be false), sends to deprive me of my pension in a foreign country, where I may remain and starve. If it bad not been for my brother Charles and General Barnard, the only two who knew what they were about when the mutiny took place against the Duke of Kent at Gibraltar, she would not be where she is now; for her father would have been killed to a certainty.

She mused for some time, and then went on. "Perhaps it is better for me that this should have happened: it brings me at once before the world, and let them judge the matter. It would have looked too much like shucklabán" (the Arabic for charlatanism—and Lady Hester was accustomed now to interlard her conversation with many Arabic words) "if I had to go and tell everybody my own story, without a reason for it: but now, since they have chosen to make a bankrupt of me, I shall out with a few things that will make them ashamed. The old king wrote down on the paper, 'Let her have the greatest pension that can be granted to a woman:'—if he were to rise from his grave, and see me now!

"Did I ever tell you what he said to Mr. Pitt one