ffections. His place was taken
by Mr. H----, a gentleman grateful to the young lady and personally
desirable, but of means too limited to satisfy her parents' views, a
fact conveyed by them to the wooer "in a friendly and elegant
manner," which must have gone far to assuage his disappointment. The
next suitor for "this blooming virgin," as her biographer names her,
had the recommendation of being a soldier. Mr. T----, too, found
favour with the damsel. His fine address was much appreciated by her
mamma, who, being a devotee of fashion, heartily espoused his cause;
but again the course of true love was barred by the question of
settlements as broached by the old lawyer, and the man of war
"retired with some resentment." There was, however, no lack of
candidates for Mary's hand and dower. Captain D---- at once stepped
into the breach and gallantly laid siege to the fair fortress. At
last, it seemed Cupid's troublesome business was done; the captain's
suit was agreeable to all parties, and the couple became engaged.
Mary's walks with her lover in the fields of Henley gave her, we
read, such exquisite delight that she frequently thought herself in
heaven. But, alas, the stern summons of duty broke in upon her
temporary Eden: the captain was ordered abroad with his regiment on
active service, and the unlucky girl could but sit at home with her
parents and patiently abide the issue.

Among Mr. Blandy's grand acquaintances was General Lord Mark Kerr,
uncle of Lady Jane Douglas, the famous heroine of the great Douglas
Cause. His lordship had taken at Henley a place named "The
Paradise," probably through the agency of the obsequious attorney,
whose family appear to have had the _entree_ to that patrician
abode. Dining with her parents at Lord Mark's house in the summer of
1746, Mary Blandy encountered her fate. That fate from the first
bore but a sinister aspect. Among the guests was one Captain the
Hon. William Henry Cranstoun, a soldier and a Scot, whose
appearance, according to a diurnal writer, was unprepossessing. "In
his person he is remarkably ordinary, his stature is low, his face
freckled and pitted with the smallpox, his eyes small and weak, his
eyebrows sandy, and his shape no ways genteel; his legs are clumsy,
and he has nothing in the least elegant in his manner." The moral
attributes of this ugly little fellow were only less attractive than
his physical imperfections. "He has a turn for gallantry, but Nature
has