her post-chaise the next morning."

Arrived at her husband's Highland Castle she was received with honours
that might almost have embarrassed a Queen, and which must have seemed
strange indeed to the woman whose memories of sordid life in that small
cottage on the outskirts of Dublin were still so vivid. Indeed no Queen
could have led a more stately life than was now opened to her.

"The Duke of Hamilton," says Walpole, to whom the world
is indebted for so much that it knows of the Gunning
sisters, "is the abstract of Scotch pride. He and the
Duchess, at their own house, walk into dinner before
their company, sit together at the upper end of their own
table, eat off the same plate, and drink to nobody under
the rank of an Earl. Would not indeed," the genial old
chatterbox adds, "one wonder how they could get anybody,
either above or below that rank, to dine with them at
all? It is, indeed, a marvel how such a host could find
guests of any degree sufficiently wanting in self-respect
to sit at his table and endure his pompous insolence--the
insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which, unhappily,
is sometimes to be met even in the most exalted rank of
life."

Perhaps the proudest period in Duchess Betty's romantic life was when,
with her husband, the Duke, she paid a visit, in 1755, to Dublin, the
"dear, dirty" city she had known in the days of her poverty and
obscurity, when her greatest dread was the sight of a bailiff in the
house, and her highest ambition to procure a dress to display her
budding charms at a dance. Her stay in Dublin was one long, intoxicating
triumph. "No Queen," she said, "could have been more handsomely
treated." Wherever she went she was followed by mobs, fighting to get a
glimpse of her, or to touch the hem of her gown, and blissful if they
could win a smile from the "darlint Duchess" who had brought so much
glory to old Ireland.

Her wedded life, however, was destined to be brief. Her husband had one
foot in his premature grave when he put the curtain-ring on her finger;
but, beyond all doubt, his marriage gave him a new if short lease of
life. She became a widow in 1758; and before she had worn her weeds
three months she had a swarm of suitors buzzing round her. The Duke of
Bridgewater was among the first to fall on his knees before the
fascinating widow, who, everybody now vowed, was lovelier than ever; but
he prov