Very different was Lady Roos"s conduct. This unhappy lady, whom we have
already mentioned as the daughter of Sir Thomas Lake, Secretary of
State, had the misfortune to be sincerely attached to her handsome but
profligate husband, whose neglect and frequent irregularities she had
pardoned, until the utter estrangement, occasioned by his passion for
the Countess of Exeter, filled her with such trouble, that, overpowered
at length by anguish, she complained to her mother Lady Lake,--an
ambitious and imperious woman, whose vanity had prompted her to bring
about this unfortunate match. Expressing the greatest indignation at the
treatment her daughter had experienced, Lady Lake counselled her to
resent it, undertaking herself to open the eyes of the injured Earl of
Exeter to his wife"s infidelity; but she was dissuaded from her purpose
by Sir Thomas Lake. Though generally governed by his wife, Sir Thomas
succeeded, in this instance, in over-ruling her design of proceeding at
once to extremities with the guilty pair, recommending that, in the
first instance, Lord Roos should be strongly remonstrated with by Lady
Lake and her daughter, when perhaps his fears might be aroused, if his
sense of duty could not be awakened.
