ed from his purpose by a
child's tears or pleadings. Captain Farmer was a man of wealth and good
family, and also one of his own boon companions. And thus, tearful,
indignant, protesting to the last, the girl was led to the altar, by the
biggest scoundrel in Tipperary--a "maiden tribute" to a lover's lust and
a father's ambition.

[Illustration: MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON]

The child's fears were more than realised in the wedded life that
followed. Before the honeymoon had waned, the Captain began to treat his
young wife with all the brutality of which he was such a past-master.
Blows and oaths were her daily lot; and when his cruelty wrung tears
from her, her husband would lock her in her room, and leave her for
days, without fire or food, until she condescended to beg for mercy.

After three months of this inferno the Captain was ordered to a distant
station; and, as his wife refused point-blank to accompany him, was by
no means reluctant to "be rid of the brat" by sending her back to her
home. Here, however, the child-wife found herself less welcome than, and
almost as unhappy as in her wedded life; and, driven to despair, she
left the home in which she had been cradled, and fared forth alone into
the world, which could not be more unkind than those whose duty it was
to shield and care for her.

How, or where, Beau Power's daughter lived during the next twelve years
must always remain largely a mystery. At one time she appears in Dublin;
at another, in Cahir; but mostly she seems to have spent her time in
England. Over this part of her adventurous life a curtain is drawn;
though some have endeavoured to raise it, and have professed to discover
scandalous doings for which there seems to be no vestige of authority.
We know that, by the time she was twenty, Sir Thomas Lawrence was so
struck by her beauty that he immortalised it on canvas; but it is only
in 1816 that the curtain is actually raised, and we find her living with
her brother in London, where, to quote her sister,

"she received at her house only those whose age and
character rendered them safe friends, and a very few
others, on whose perfect respect and consideration she
could wholly rely. Among the latter was the Earl of
Blessington, then a widower."

Whatever may have been her life during this obscure period, when her
charms were maturing into such exquisite beauty, it is thus certain that
at its close she was movin