unclouded happiness, when, the "world forgetting and by the world
forgot," they lived only for love, caring nothing of the future. They
were days of simple delights; for their entire income was the interest
of Mr Long's £3000, which proved ample for their needs. Mrs Sheridan,
now at the zenith of her fame, might have won thousands by her
voice--she actually refused offers of nearly £4000 for one short
season--but her husband wished to keep the Nightingale's voice for his
own exclusive delight; and she was only too happy in thus turning her
back on fame and fortune.

But such halcyon days could not last long. Even Paradise might pall on
such a restless temperament as that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He
began to sigh for the outer world in which he felt that it was his
destiny to shine, for an arena in which he could do justice to the gifts
which were clamouring for scope and exercise. And thus, to Mrs
Sheridan's lasting regret, cottage and roses and simple delights of the
country were left behind, and she found herself installed in a Portman
Square house, in the heart of the world of fashion.

Here Sheridan, always the most improvident of men, launched out into
extravagances more suited to an income of £5000 a year than the paltry
£150 which was all he could command. He entertained on a lavish scale;
and his wit and charm, supplemented by his wife's beauty and gift of
song, soon surrounded them with a fashionable crowd eager to eat his
dinners and to attend his wife's _soirées_. Sheridan was in his element
in this environment of luxury and prodigality; but the Bath Nightingale
would gladly have changed it all for "a little quiet home that I can
enjoy in comfort," as she told her husband--above all, for the Burnham
cottage where she had been so idyllically happy.