Not yet in her life had love come to her.  Her first husband had been thrust upon her and had treated her outrageously.  Her second husband was much older than she; and, though she was not without a certain kindly feeling for one who had been kind to her, she married him, first of all, for his title and position.

Having been reared in poverty, she had no conception of the value of money; and, though the earl was remarkably extravagant, the new countess was even more so.  One after another their London houses were opened and decorated with the utmost lavishness.  They gave innumerable entertainments, not only to the nobility and to men of rank, but—­because this was Lady Blessington’s peculiar fad—­to artists and actors and writers of all degrees.  The American, N. P. Willis, in his Pencilings by the Way, has given an interesting sketch of the countess and her surroundings, while the younger Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) has depicted D’Orsay as Count Mirabel in Henrietta Temple.  Willis says: 

In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly bound books and mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone.  The picture, to my eye, as the door opened, was a very lovely one—­a woman of remarkable beauty, half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent lamp suspended from the center of the arched ceiling.  Sofas, couches, ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through the room; enameled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in every corner, and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a book, to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings.

All this “crowded sumptuousness” was due to the taste of Lady Blessington.  Amid it she received royal dukes, statesmen such as Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Russell, and Brougham, actors such as Kemble and Matthews, artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie, and men of letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton, and the two Disraelis.  To maintain this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of money, totaling about half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders.  Of course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately.  He might have lived in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager, improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings of his wife.

In all this display, which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared, there is to be found a psychological basis.  She was now verging upon the thirties—­a time which is a very critical period in a woman’s emotional life, if she has not already given herself over to love and been loved in return.  During Lady Blessington’s earlier years she had suffered in many ways, and it is probable that no thought of love had entered her mind.  She was only too glad if she could escape from the harshness of her father and the cruelty of her first husband.  Then came her development into a beautiful woman, content for the time to be languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and peace which had come to her.