ion she was
forced to eat her own dinner an hour or two beforehand."

In his lordship's resentment against her stolen marriage, he refused to
allow her to have much intercourse with the rest of her family. Lady
Louisa Stuart tells us that her mother, Lady Bute, "remembered having
only seen him once, but that in a manner likely to leave some impression
on the mind of a child. Lady Mary (Lady Bute's mother) was dressing, and
she playing about the room, when there entered an elderly stranger (of
dignified appearance and still handsome) with the authoritative air of
a person entitled to admission at all times; upon which, to her great
surprise, Lady Mary, instantly starting up from the toilet-table,
dishevelled as she was, fell on her knees to ask his blessing. A proof
that even in the great and gay world this primitive custom was still
universal."

The most agreeable memory Lady Mary preserved of this formal and
cold-blooded sire was that when a member of the Kit-Cat Club he
nominated her, then seven years old, as one of the toasts of the year.
The child was sent for, and, adorned with her very finest attire,
presented to the members. Her health was drunk, and her name engraved,
according to custom, on a drinking glass. Probably this hour of triumph
was the happiest in all her life, and, moreover, may have stimulated her
with the desire to shine always among the foremost. Her after life was
strangely assorted--she saw much of the world, and she was accounted the
brightest female wit of her time. She christened Pope the "wicked wasp
of Twickenham", and did not escape scatheless either from his attacks or
from those of Horace Walpole. She loved great prospects--loved rocks and
heights. It is possible that her recollections of the Sherwood country
were not agreeable, since she showed herself averse from any allusion in
her marvellous letters; but in spite of the artificiality of her period
one may be certain that her adventurous spirit prompted her to leave
unexplored no portion of the ancient forest. The ruggedness of
Wharncliffe Chase was more to her fancy: in her old age, writing from
Avignon, she declared this the finest prospect she had ever seen.

Her nephew Evelyn, second Duke of Kingston, chose for wife the notorious
lady whom Walpole nicknamed "Duchess Robin Hood", and from whose
romantic adventures resulted one of the most celebrated trials of the
eighteenth century. After his death, in 1773, the title became exti