The evenings were often spent at the theatre or opera, and still more frequently at Vauxhall or Ranelagh gardens, and at the latter places she was always sure of a personal triumph. Her beauty was so remarkable and so admirably set off by her generally fine toilets that she quickly became a noted visitor. Sir Horace Walpole had called her on one occasion "The American Beauty," and the sobriquet clung like a perfume to her. When the Semples had a box and a supper in the rotunda the most noble and fashionable of the young bloods hung round it, paraded past it, or when possible took a box in such close proximity that their toasts to "The Divine American" could be distinctly or indistinctly heard. Both Mr. and Mrs. Semple were proud of this notoriety. It was quite in keeping with the social _elat_ of the age that every glass should be raised when they entered their box at the theatre or opera; quite honorable and flattering to walk between the admiring beaux who watched their entry into the gardens. Maria gave them distinction, exhilarating notice and attention. She was spoken of in the papers as "the lovely Miss Semple, the beautiful daughter of our new collector," and her _debut_ at the next spring functions of the Court was confidently predicted. The break in this generally agreeable life came, of course, through a man's selfish desires, dignified with the name of love. Mrs. Semple had a cousin who was largely engaged in the Mediterranean trade--then entirely in English hands--and when Maria had been about eighteen months in London he returned to that city after a sojourn in Turkey and the Greek islands of nearly three years. He had been named at intervals to Maria, but his existence had made no impression upon her, and she was astonished on coming to the dinner table one day to meet him there. The instinct of conquest was immediately aroused; she smiled and he was subdued. The man who had snubbed Turkish bashaws and won concessions from piratical beys in Tunis and Algiers was suddenly afraid of a woman. He might have run away, but he did not; he was under a spell, and he went with her to the opera, and became her willing slave thereafter. Now during her residence in London, Maria had had many admirers; some she had frowned away, some her father had bowed out, but Richard Spencer was a very different man to be reckoned with. He was Mrs. Semple's cousin, and Mrs. Semple was strongly attached to every member of her family. Cousin Richard's suit was advocated, pressed, even insisted upon by her. He was present at every meal and went with them to every entertainment, and the generality of Maria's admirers understood that he was her accepted lover.