It speaks well for the earl that when the inconvenient husband
died a marriage at once took place and Mrs. Browne became a
countess. Then, after other children had been born, the lady died,
leaving the earl a widower at about the age of forty. The only
legitimate son born of this marriage followed his mother to the
grave; and so for the third time the earldom of Blessington seemed
likely to become extinct. The death of his wife, however, gave the
earl a special opportunity to display his extravagant tastes. He
spent more than four thousand pounds on the funeral ceremonies,
importing from France a huge black velvet catafalque which had
shortly before been used at the public funeral of Napoleon's
marshal, Duroc, while the house blazed with enormous wax tapers
and glittered with cloth of gold.

Lord Blessington soon plunged again into the busy life of London.
Having now no heir, there was no restraint on his expenditures,
and he borrowed large sums of money in order to buy additional
estates and houses and to experience the exquisite joy of spending
lavishly. At this time he had his lands in Ireland, a town house
in St. James's Square, another in Seymour Place, and still another
which was afterward to become famous as Gore House, in Kensington.

Some years before he had met in Ireland a lady called Mrs. Maurice
Farmer; and it happened that she now came to London. The earlier
story of her still young life must here be told, because her name
afterward became famous, and because the tale illustrates
wonderfully well the raw, crude, lawless period of the Regency,
when England was fighting her long war with Napoleon, when the
Prince Regent was imitating all the vices of the old French kings,