"from eight to ten o'clock in the evening, a strange procession paraded the crowded avenues, obliging everyone to make way and exciting universal laughter. In front marched two sergeants with their halberds, then tripped the self-conscious Lady Coventry, attended by her husband and an ardent admirer, the amorous Earl of Pembroke, while twelve soldiers of the guard followed in the rear!" One day, so runs another story which illustrates her ladyship's lack of discretion, she was talking to King George II., who in spite of his age, was a great admirer of beauty, and especially of my Lady Coventry. "Are you not sorry," His Majesty enquired, "that there are to be no more masquerades?" "Indeed, no," was the answer. "I am quite weary of them and of all London sights. There is only one left that I am really anxious to see, and that is a _coronation_!" This unflattering wish she was not destined to realise; for King George survived the foolish beauty by a fortnight. Lady Coventry had no greater admirer of her own charms than herself. She spent her days worshipping at the shrine of her loveliness, and embellished nature with every device of art. She squandered fortunes in adorning it with the most costly jewellery and dresses, of one of which the following story is told. One day she exhibited to George Selwyn a wonderful costume which she was going to wear at an approaching fête. The dress was a miracle of blue silk, richly brocaded with silver spots of the size of a shilling. "And how do you think I shall look in it, Mr Selwyn?" she archly asked. "Why," he replied, "you will look like change for a guinea." [Illustration: MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY] Mrs Delany draws a remarkable picture of my lady at this culminating period of her vanity. "Yesterday after chapel," she writes, "the Duchess brought home Lady Coventry to feast me--and a feast she was! She is a fine figure and vastly handsome, notwithstanding a silly look sometimes about the month; she has a thousand airs, but with a sort of innocence that diverts one! Her dress was a black silk sack, made for a large hoop, which she wore without any, and it trailed a yard on the ground. She had on a cobweb-laced handkerchief, a pink satin long cloak, lined with ermine mixed with squirrel-skins. On her head a French cap that just covered the top of her head, of blond, and stood in the form of a butterfly with wings not quite extended; frilled sort of lappets crossed under her chin, and tied with pink and green ribbon--a head-dress that would have charmed a shepherd! She had a thousand dimples and prettinesses in her cheeks, her eyes a little drooping at the corners, but fine for all that."