Thus, at last, the nightmare that had clouded the young life of the squireen’s daughter was over, and she was free to plan her future as she would.  What this future was to be was soon placed beyond doubt.  The widowed Earl of Blessington had long been among the most ardent admirers of the lovely Irishwoman; and before Farmer had been many months in his prison-grave, he had won her consent to be his Countess.  The “ugly duckling” had reached a coronet through such trials and vicissitudes as happily seldom fall to the lot of woman; and her future was to be as radiant as her past had been ignoble and obscure.

Seldom has a woman cradled in comparative poverty made such a splendid alliance.  Lord Blessington was a veritable Croesus among Irish landlords, with a rent-roll of L30,000 a year; allied, it is true, to an extravagance more than commensurate with his revenue.  He had a passion for all things theatrical, and an almost barbaric taste in the gorgeous furnishings with which he loved to surround himself; and this taste his wife seems to have shared.

When the Earl took his bride to his ancestral home, Mountjoy Forest, she revelled in her boudoir, with its hangings of “crimson Genoa silk-velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe; and all the furniture of equal richness.”  But she had had enough of Irish life in the days of her childhood, and soon sighed to return to London and to a wider sphere for her beauty and her social ambition; and before she had been a bride six months we find her installed in St James’s Square, drawing to her salon all the greatest and most famous in the land, and moving among her courtiers with the dignity and graciousness of a Queen.

Royal Dukes kissed her hand; statesman basked in her smile; Moore sang his sweetest songs for her delight; and all the arts and sciences worshipped at her shrine, and raved about her beauty of face and graces of mind.

Sated at last with all this splendour and adulation, my Lady Blessington yearned for more worlds to conquer; and so, one August day in 1822, she and her lord set out on a triumphal progress through Europe, with a retinue of attendants, and with luxurious equipages such as a king might have been proud to boast.  In France they added to their train Count d’Orsay, who threw up his army-commission under the lure of the Countess’s beautiful eyes; and seldom has fair lady had so devoted and charming a cavalier as this “Admirable Crichton” of Georgian days.

“Count d’Orsay,” says Charles James Mathews, the famous comedian, who knew him well, “was the beau-ideal of manly dignity and grace.  He was the model of all that could be conceived of noble demeanour and youthful candour; handsome beyond all question; accomplished to the last degree; highly educated, and of great literary acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of mind that spread happiness on all around him.  His conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as instructive.  He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer, swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best horseman, the best draughtsman, of his age.”

Such was the Count, then a youth of nineteen, who thus entered Lady Blessington’s life, in which he was to play such an intimate part until its tragic close.