Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/31

 "I can recollect, when I was ten or twelve years old, going to Hastings’s trial. My garter, somehow, came off, and was picked up by Lord Grey, then a young man. At this hour, as if it were before me in a picture, I can see his handsome but very pale face, his broad forehead; his corbeau coat, with cut-steel buttons; his white satin waistcoat and breeches, and the buckles in his shoes. He saw from whom the garter fell, but, observing my confusion, did not wish to increase it, and with infinite delicacy gave the garter to the person who sat there to serve tea and coffee.

"The first person I ever danced with was Sir Gilbert Heathcote.

"When I was young, I was never what you call handsome, but brilliant. My teeth were brilliant, my complexion brilliant, my language—ah! there it was—something striking and original, that caught everybody’s attention. I remember, when I was living with Mr. Pitt, that, one morning after a party, he said to me, 'Really, Hester, Lord Hertford' (the father of the late lord, and a man of high pretensions for his courtly manners) 'paid you so many compliments about your looks last night, that you might well be proud of them.'—'Not at all,' answered I: 'he is deceived, if he thinks I am handsome, for I know I am not. If you were to take every feature in my