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 Miss Monckton pressed her to come another evening, when she would have Mrs. Siddons to meet her. This invitation was duly accepted. Two years afterwards—in May 1786—Miss Monckton married, at the mature age of 39, Edmund, seventh Earl of Cork and Orrery. His first marriage had been dissolved four years before. The second Lady Cork proved a much greater success than the first had done, and certainly no one could be dull with her. Her married life, however, was not a long one, for she was left a widow in 1798. Her salons were now held in a house in New Burlington Street, that she had decorated according to her own taste, which was rather in advance of the day she lived in. Her boudoir was literally filled with flowers and large looking-glasses, which reached from the top to the bottom. At the base was a brass railing, which, reflected in the glasses, had a very pretty effect. The boudoir was terminated by a sombre conservatory, where eternal twilight fell on fountains of rose-water "that never dry, and on beds of flowers that never fade."

Her receptions had now become noted features in London Society, and she would go to infinite trouble to secure a new attraction. Hearing that the celebrated surgeon. Sir Andrew Carlisle, had dissected and preserved a female dwarf, named Cochinie, Lady Cork became seized with the desire