om the wilds of
Connaught, whose almost unearthly beauty won the instant homage of every
man, from His Excellency the Earl of Harrington, then Lord Lieutenant,
to the sourest jarvey who cracked a whip in her streets. To quote the
pardonably extravagant language of a chronicler of the time,

"They swam into the social firmament of the Irish capital
like twin planets of dazzling splendour, eclipsing all
other constellations, as if the pall of night had been
drawn over them."

They had grown to girlhood, so the story ran from mouth to mouth, in a
ruinous thatched house, in the shadow of Castle Coote, in County
Roscommon, and were the daughters of John Gunning, a roystering,
happy-go-lucky, dram-drinking squireen, whose most serious occupation in
life was keeping the brokers' men on the right side of his door. And at
the time this story opens they were living in a cottage, rented for a
modest eight pounds a year, on the outskirts of Dublin, with their
mother, who was a daughter of Lord Mayo.

To say that all Dublin was at the feet of the Gunning sisters, at the
first sight of their lovely faces and dainty figures, is an unadorned
statement of fact. The young "bloods" of the capital were their slaves
to a man, ready to spill the last drop of blood for them; and every
gallant of the Viceregal Court drank toasts to their beauty, and vied
with his rivals to win a smile or a word from them. Peg Woffington, it
is said, threw up her arms in wonder at the sight of them, and, as she
hugged each in turn, declared that she "had never seen anything half so
sweet"; and Tom Sheridan went down on his knees in involuntary homage to
the majesty of their beauty.

It was Tom Sheridan who placed his stage wardrobe at their disposal when
they were invited to the great Viceregal ball in honour of King George's
birthday; and, attired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet respectively, they
danced the stately minuet and rollicking country dances with such grace
and abandon that lords and ladies stopped in their dances, and mounted
on chairs and tables to feast their eyes on so rare and ravishing a
sight.

"With Betty as with Maria," says Mr Frankfort Moore, "the
art of the dance had become part of her nature. Her
languorous eyes were in sympathy with the voluptuous
movements of her feet and lithe body, and the curves
made by her arms formed an invisible chain that held
everyone entranced. The caresses