brother, Lord Mayo, listening to the dictates of fraternal affection, would not suffer a sister and her family to be reduced to distress, but his lordship remained inflexible to her repeated solicitations. The ill-looking men I now found had entered the house by virtue of execution, and were preparing to throw her and her children out-of-doors."
Good-natured Miss,—or as she is sometimes designated, Mrs.—Bellamy came to the rescue. She lent the Gunnings money, and, according to some accounts, she brought them to her own house and sheltered them there. An intimacy soon sprung up, and a story is told of the two beauties going with Mrs. Bellamy to have their fortunes told by a famous fortune-teller in Capel Street. The scene would make a fine subject for a painter. The prophetess foretold a splendid future for the two girls. Maria was to marry an earl, and to be loved exceedingly; as for Elizabeth, no less than two coronets were promised to her, both of the strawberry leaves of a duchess. To poor George Anne Bellamy, who had slipped a wedding ring on her finger with the object of deceiving the soothsayer, the angry woman cried, "Take off that wedding ring—you never were, you never will be, married!" A few words whispered into the terrified actress's ear completed her dismay. Then the fortune-teller vanished, leaving
