hree years she was a Duchess in all but name, until
the Duke, on the death of his legal wife, daughter of the Earl of
Carberry, was at last able to put Lavinia in her place.

As Duchess, a title which she lived nine years to enjoy, she won golden
opinions by her modest dignity, her large-heartedness, and by the
cleverness and charm of her conversation, which none admired more than
Lord Bathurst and Lord Granville.

Duchess Lavinia had been dead thirty years when Mary Catherine Bolton,
who was to follow in her footsteps, was obscurely cradled in Long Acre
in 1790. Like Lavinia Fenton, Mary Bolton was born for the stage. As a
child the sweetness of her voice and the grace of her movements charmed
all who knew her. The greatest teachers of the day taught her to sing,
and when only sixteen she made a brilliant _debut_ as Polly, recalling
all the triumphs of her famous predecessor.

But it was as Ariel that she made her real conquest of London. "So
pretty and winning in pouting wilfulness, so caressing, her voice having
the flowing sweetness of music, she bounded along with so light a foot
that it scarcely seemed to rest upon the stage." It is little wonder
that Ariel danced her way into many hearts, and that even such a sedate
personage as Edward, second Lord Thurlow, should so far succumb to her
fascinations as to offer her marriage. Her wedded life was only too
brief, but she rewarded her lord with three sons; and a liberal share of
her blood flows in the veins of the Baron of to-day, her grandson.

Not many years after Mary Bolton had danced her way into the Peerage
London was losing its head over still another "Polly Peachum"--Catherine
Stephens, daughter of a carver and gilder in the West of London. Miss
Stephens, who like her predecessors in the _role_, sang divinely even as
a child, was but seventeen when she made her first stage curtsy, and won
fame at a bound, as Mandano in _Artaxerxes_. One triumph succeeded
another until she reached the pinnacle of success as Polly of the
_Beggar's Opera_.

Catherine Stephens had no lack of gilded and titled lovers; but she was
too much wedded to her art to listen to any vows or to be lured from it
even by a coronet. Although, however, she eluded her destiny until the
verge of middle age she was fated to die a Countess; and a Countess she
became when George Capel, fifth Earl of Essex, asked her to be his wife.
The Earl had passed his eightieth birthday, and was nearly forty y