hospitality. Her dinners and her entertainments were admittedly the
finest in London; and invitations to them were as eagerly sought as
commands to a Court-ball.

"At Gore House," said Brougham, "one is sure to meet some of the most
interesting people in England, and equally sure not to have a dull
moment." Brougham was himself a constant and a welcome guest, and the
men he met there ranged from Prince Louis Napoleon, then an exile
without a prospect of a crown, and the Duke of Wellington to Albert
Smith and Douglas Jerrold--so wide was the net of Lady Blessington's
hospitality. And all paid the same glowing tribute, not only to their
hostess's loveliness but to the warmth of heart, which was one of her
greatest charms. And of all the great ones who sat at her dinner-table
or thronged her drawing-rooms not one was wittier or more fascinating
than Count d'Orsay, who, in spite of envious and malicious tongues,
never occupied to the Countess any other relation than that of a
dearly-loved and devoted son.

Although Lady Blessington's income rarely fell below £4,000 a year, it
was quite inadequate to her expenditure; and it was clear to her that
this era of splendid hospitality could not last for ever. A day of
reckoning was sure to come; and it came sooner than she had anticipated.
D'Orsay, who seems to have been even more careless of money than his
mother-in-law, plunged deeper and deeper in debt--some of it, at least,
incurred in helping to keep up the Gore House _ménage_--until he found
himself at last face to face with liabilities far exceeding £100,000,
and besieged with duns and bailiffs. Once he was arrested at the suit of
a bootmaker, and was rescued from prison by Lady Blessington's
rapidly-emptying purse. The climax came when a sheriff's officer
smuggled himself into Gore House, and brought down on d'Orsay's head an