pretty emerald ring, which he begg’d me to wear, to bind still stronger the tie of Brotherhood which he has always claim’d.  In the midst of all this he brought me a message from Sheridan.”  This, which she describes as a “well-timed Petition for Forgiveness,” she had the prudence to wave aside.  She said that she had no wish to injure him, and only asked him to keep out of her way, or, if they happened to meet, to cease to persecute her.  And that was very well, or would have been so, if she had had any character at all, a quality which she unfortunately had not.  In 1807, the following year, she goes out to spend the evening with her daughter, Lady Caroline, now married to William Lamb.  “The entrance is, you know, very dark; to my dismay, I saw a ruffian-like looking man following me into the house.  I hasten’d upstairs, but to my great dismay he also ascended and enter’d the room immediately after me.  It was so dark I could not at first make out who he was.  When I did, I was not the better pleas’d with his establishing himself and passing the whole evening with us; but much as I was displeased with him, I was still more so with myself for being unable to resist laughing and appearing entertained (he was so uncommonly clever), tho’ I persevered in my determination of not speaking to him.  I do not like his having got the entree there, and think him, even old as he is, a dangerous acquaintance for Caroline.  Of course you perceive it was Sheridan.”  Considering that she suspected him of having written and sent grossly indecent letters to that girl of hers, one would have said that he was even more than a dangerous acquaintance.  Light-mindedness here spills over into something rather worse.  However, there he was, established, and it was no way to dispossess him to laugh at his jokes.

I must now invite the reader to a farce, and, if he can forget that Sheridan was a grandfather and fifty-six, a very good farce it is.  It is 1807, the 28th July.  Lady Bessborough is staying with her daughter for her first confinement, and receives a message from Mrs. Sheridan, a rather wild young woman in her way, known to all Devonshire House as Hecca.  She goes at midnight,

“... and was carried up to her bedroom, where we had not sat long when a violent burst at the door announc’d the arrival of Sheridan, not perfectly sober.  The most ridiculous scene ensued—­that is, ridiculous it would have been if I had not felt myself too indignant and disgusted to be entertain’d.  He began by asking my pardon, entreating my mercy and compassion, saying that he was a wretch, and was even at that moment more in love with me than with any woman he had ever met with, on which Hecca exclaimed:  ’Not excepting me?  Why, you always tell me that I am the only woman you were ever in love with.’  ’So you are, to be sure, my dear Hecca; you know that, of course—­you know that I love you better than anything on earth.’ ‘Except her!’ ’Pish,