There was rumor, at one time, of the Earl seriously resenting the attentions of Bolingbroke.  The old King, too, showed her some courtesies; and the most oft-told anecdote of her is about His Majesty asking if she were not sorry the masquerades were over.  She assured him she was surfeited with pageants,—­there was but one she wished yet to see, and that was a coronation.  She saw it not, for the King outlived her by a fortnight.  Had she but abstained from the use of paint and powder, her career would not have ended at the early age of twenty-seven.  Blood-poisoning came from the use of it.  Her beauty paled rapidly.  My lady lay on a couch, a pocket-glass constantly in hand, grieving at the gradual decay.  The room was darkened, that others might not discern that which so chagrined her.  Then the curtains of the bed were drawn to guard her from pitying gaze; and then, on a September day, in 1760, the pathetic end came.  Over ten thousand people viewed her coffin.  Sensationalism even after the drop of the curtain!  The Countess left four children, two sons and two daughters.  Of these, Anne, four years old at her mother’s death, was one of the children whom George Selwyn showed much kindness to.  The Earl married again, the second Countess being Barbara, daughter of Lord St. John of Bletsoe.  George William, the son of Maria, came to the earldom in 1809.

In an ode on the death of Maria the poet Mason wrote:—­

   “For she was fair beyond your brightest bloom
     (This Envy owns, since now her bloom is fled): 
   Fair as the Forms that wove in Fancy’s loom,
     Float in light vision round the Poet’s head. 
   Whene’er with soft serenity she smiled,
     Or caught the orient blush of quick surprise,
   How sweetly mutable, how brightly wild. 
     The liquid lustre darted from her eyes! 
   Each look, each motion, waked a new-born grace
     That o’er her form its transient glory cast: 
   Some lovelier wonder soon usurped the place,
     Chased by a charm still lovelier than the last.”

[Illustration:  ELIZABETH COUNTESS GROSVENOR by LAWRENCE]

LADY ELIZABETH

In these latter days can we imagine a lawsuit, costing contestants thousands of pounds, over the right to a certain heraldic charge?  In the fourteenth century Sir Robert Grosvenor was the defendant in such a suit, and we read of Chaucer, John of Gaunt, Owen Glendower, and Hotspur being witnesses before the High Court of Chivalry.  Sir Robert established his defence, and since those days the Grosvenors have ever held a high rank in the nobility of England.  Quite as proud a patrician position was held through the centuries by the family of Gower.  In the early part of this century, the heir of the Grosvenors espoused the most beautiful daughter of the House of Gower,—­Lady Elizabeth Mary Leveson Gower.  This lady was the youngest daughter of George, the second Marquis of Stafford, who married, in 1785, Elizabeth, who was Countess of Sutherland and Baroness Strathnaver in her own right.  The Marquis was created Duke of Sutherland in 1833.