Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/197

MRS. GLADSTONE was first introduced to Gladstone at the house of Mr. Milnes Gaskell in London, and then they used to meet at Lady Theresa Lister's musical parties and elsewhere. The two sisters were known as "the twin flowers of North Wales," were greatly admired in London society, and received numerous proposals of marriage. They were, however, bound up in each other, and were determined that one could not be engaged or married without the other. Gladstone admired Catherine in silence, scarcely dreaming that he dared aspire to her hand. In 1835 he was invited by Glynne to pay a visit to Hawarden. But still he did not venture to speak. In the winter of 1838-39 he was suffering from overwork, and was ordered abroad. He had been a junior Lord of the Treasury, and also Under-Secretary for War under Sir Robert Peel, and had published his book on Church and State, and so was not without claims to distinction. In Rome in December he met Stephen Glynne and his sisters, and there found courage to propose to Catherine one moonlight night in the Coliseum. He had repeated to her Byron's lines from "Manfred" beginning: 161