w: and wherever she
appeared, at church or in the park, I was always ready to offer her her
book, or to canter on horseback by the side of her chariot.

Many of her Ladyship's letters were the most whimsical rodomontades that
ever blue-stocking penned. She was a woman who took up and threw off
a greater number of dear friends than any one I ever knew. To some of
these female darlings she began presently to write about my unworthy
self, and it was with a sentiment of extreme satisfaction I found at
length that the widow was growing dreadfully afraid of me; calling me
her bete noire, her dark spirit, her murderous adorer, and a thousand
other names indicative of her extreme disquietude and terror. It was:
'The wretch has been dogging my chariot through the park,' or, 'my fate
pursued me at church,' and 'my inevitable adorer handed me out of
my chair at the mercer's,' or what not. My wish was to increase this
sentiment of awe in her bosom, and to make her believe that I was a
person from whom escape was impossible.

To this end I bribed a fortune-teller, whom she consulted along with a
number of the most foolish and distinguished people of Dublin, in those
days; and who, although she went dressed like one of her waiting-women,
did not fail to recognise her real rank, and to describe as her future
husband her persevering adorer Redmond Barry, Esquire. This incident
disturbed her very much. She wrote about it in terms of great wonder
and terror to her female correspondents. 'Can this monster,' she wrote,
'indeed do as he boasts, and bend even Fate to his will?--can he make
me marry him though I cordially detest him, and bring me a slave to
his feet. The horrid look of his black serpent-like eyes fascinates and
frightens me: it seems to follow me everywhere, and even when I close my
own eyes, the dreadful gaze penetrates the lids, and is still upon me.'

When a woman begins to talk of a man in this way, he is an ass who
does not win her; and, for my part, I used to follow her about, and put
myself in an attitude opposite her, 'and fascinate her with my glance,'
as she said, most assiduously. Lord George Poynings, her former admirer,
was meanwhile keeping his room with his wound, and seemed determined to
give up all claims to her favour; for he denied her admittance when she
called, sent no answer to her multiplied correspondence, and contented
himself by saying generally, that the surgeon had forbidden him to
receive visito