n
home, she resolved to try the stage as a means of livelihood, and
applied to Garrick, who gave her a trial on the boards, but the
attempt proved a failure. She then turned her hand to authorship, but
with no better success. Although reduced to the most abject poverty,
she would not make herself known to her relatives, and in complete
despair, and overwhelmed with a sense of her disgrace, in her last
extremity she threw herself on the streets, and died in miserable
beggary and wretchedness in Round Court, off the Strand. It was on her
death-bed that she disclosed to the surgeon who attended her the
melancholy and tragic story of her wasted life. But from the
localities in which she had habitually moved, she must have many a
time passed her relatives in the streets, though withheld by shame
from making herself known, when they imagined her to be in some
distant country, or in the grave.

The strange disappearance of Lady Cathcart, on the other hand, whose
fourth husband was Hugh Maguire, an officer in the Hungarian service,
is an extraordinary instance of a wife being, for a long term of
years, imprisoned by her own husband without any chance of escape. It
seems that, soon after her last marriage, she discovered that her
husband had only made her his wife with the object of possessing
himself of her property, and, alarmed at the idea of losing
everything, she plaited some of her jewels in her hair and others in
her petticoat. But she little anticipated what was in store for her,
although she had already become suspicious of her husband's intentions
towards her. His plans, however, were soon executed; for one morning,
under the pretence of taking her for a drive, he carried her away
altogether: and when she suggested, after they had been driving some
time, that they would be late for dinner, he coolly replied, "We do
not dine to-day at Tewing, but at Chester, whither we are journeying."

Some alarm was naturally caused, writes Sir Bernard Burke, "by her
sudden disappearance, and an attorney was sent in pursuit with a writ
of _habeas corpus_ or _ne exeat regno_, who found the travellers at
Chester, on their way to Ireland, and demanded a sight of Lady
Cathcart. Colonel Maguire at once consented, but, knowing that the
attorney had never seen his wife, he persuaded a woman to personate
her.

The attorney, in due time, was introduced to the supposed Lady
Cathcart, and was asked if she accompanied Colonel Maguire to Irela