day
for my dining with her, our various engagements appearing to clash. She
took up the pocket-book where hers were inscribed, and began reading
them out with the following running commentary: "Wednesday--no,
Wednesday won't do; Lady Holland dines with me--naughty lady!--won't do,
my dear. Thursday?" "Very sorry, Lady Cork, we are engaged." "Ah yes, so
am I; let's see--Friday; no, Friday I have the Duchess of C----, another
naughty lady; mustn't come then, my dear. Saturday?" "No, Lady Cork, I
am very sorry--Saturday, we are engaged to Lady D----." "Oh dear, oh
dear! improper lady, too! but a long time ago, everybody's forgotten all
about it--very proper now! quite proper now!"

Lady Cork's memory seemed to me to stretch beyond the limits of what
everybody had forgotten. She was quite a young woman at the time of the
youth of George III., and spoke of Frederick, Prince of Wales, to whose
wife she, then the Honorable Mary Monckton, was maid of honor. It is a
most tantalizing circumstance to me now, to remember a fragment of a
conversation between herself and my mother, on the occasion of the first
visit I was ever taken to pay her. I was a very young girl; it was just
after my return from school at Paris, and the topics discussed by my
mother and her old lady friend interested me so little that I was
looking out of the window, and wondering when we should go away, when my
attention was arrested by these words spoken with much emphasis by Lady
Cork: "Yes, my dear, I was alone in the room, and the picture turned in
its frame, and Lord Bute came out from behind it;" here, perceiving my
eyes riveted upon her, she lowered her voice, and I distinctly felt that
I was expected to look out of the window again, without having any idea,
however, that the question was probably one of the character of a
"naughty lady" of higher rank than those so designated to me some years
later by old Lady Cork, who, if I may judge by this fragment of gossip,
might have cleared up some disputed points as to the relations between
the Princess of Wales and the Prime Minister.

I do not know that Lady Cork's reputation for beauty ever equaled that
she had for wit, but when I knew her, at upward of ninety, she was
really a very comely old woman. Her complexion was still curiously fine
and fair, and there was great vivacity in her eyes and countenance, as
well as wonderful liveliness in her manner. Her figure was very slight
and diminutive, and at the