es together. She would never go to the great houses
if she could by any means avoid it, but bore him no grudge for going
without her, and was always open-armed for his return.

Mayfield Cottage, Ashbourne, was their next harbourage; and here is a
Wheatley picture of them on their way to a dinner-party.

"We dined out to-day at the Ackroyds', neighbours of ours ...
we found, in the middle of our walk, that we were near half an
hour too early, so we set to practising country-dances in the
middle of a retired green lane till the time was expired."

Then he takes her to the Ashbourne ball, and for once leaves himself
out of the letter.

"... You cannot imagine what a sensation Bessy excited at the
Ball the other night. She was prettily dressed, and certainly
looked very beautiful.... She was very much frightened, but
she got through it very well. She wore a turban that night to
please me, and she looks better in it than anything else; for
it strikes everybody almost that sees her, how like the form
and expression of her face are to Catalani's, and a turban is
the thing for that kind of character."

Catalani, in Caverford's portrait, has the rapt eye of the Cumaean
sibyl. One of Moore's fine friends, an admirer of Bessy's, speaks to
him of her "wild, poetic face," and the Duchess of Sussex thought her
like "Lady Heathcote in the days of her beauty." That is putting her
very high, for, according to Cosway, Lady Heathcote was a lovely young
woman indeed; but the "wild, poetic face" gets us as near as need be.

In 1815 troubles began from which the poor girl was never to be free
again. She lost one of her three little girls, Olivia Byron, for whom
the poet had been sponsor. "... It was with difficulty I could get
her away from her little dead baby," Moore tells his mother, "and then
only under a promise that she should see it again last night...." In
1817, while Moore was in Paris, pursuing his pleasures, another child,
Barbara, had a fall, and he came home in August to find her "very ill
indeed." On September 10th she is still ill, but if she should get a
little better, "I mean to go for a day or two to Lord Lansdowne's
to look at a house.... He has been searching his neighbourhood for a
habitation for me, in a way very flattering indeed from such a man."
But he did not go. September 20th, "It's all over, my dearest Mother!"

"Poor Bessy," we read, "neither eats nor sleeps