ted, and about
midnight his body was discovered lying face downwards close to one of
the deer-park gates. He had been dead for some hours.

What was the cause of his mysterious death? The coroner's jury appear
to have found no difficulty in coming to a decision. Their verdict was,
"Died by the visitation of God--to wit, a spasm of the heart." Thus
vanished from the world one of its most brilliant and picturesque
ornaments, in the very prime of his life and his powers (he was only
forty-six), and when he seemed assured of a political future even more
dazzling than his Turf fame.

But there were many, among the thousands who deplored the tragic eclipse
of such a promising life, who were by no means satisfied with the vague
verdict of the inquest. Lord George had always been a man of remarkable
vigour and health, and never more so than on the day of his death. Was
it at all likely that such a man would drop dead during a quiet and
unexciting stroll across country? Later years, however, have brought new
facts to light which suggest a very different explanation of this
tragedy. "The hand of God" it was, no doubt, which struck the fatal
blow--it always must be; but was there no other agency, and that a human
one? Could it not be the hand of a brother? Some have said it was; and
although the story is involved in obscurity and may be open to grave
doubt (indeed it has been more than once flatly contradicted) there can,
perhaps, be no harm in including it in this volume. This is the story as
it has been told.

Though Lord George Bentinck was the handsomest man, and one of the most
eligible _partis_ of his day he never married; yet, no doubt, he had
many an "affair of the heart." But not one of all the high-born ladies,
who would have turned their backs on coronets to become "Lady George,"
could in his eyes compare with Annie May Berkelay, a lovely and
penniless girl, who could not even boast a "respectable" parentage.

Miss Berkeley was, so it is said, a child of that most romantic union
between the Earl of Berkeley and pretty Mary Cole, the butcher's
daughter. This girl he professed to have made his countess shortly after
in the parish church of Berkeley. That his lordship legally married his
low-born bride at Lambeth eleven years later is beyond doubt, but that
alleged first secret marriage was more than open to suspicion. There
seems little doubt that the entry the in Berkeley church register was a
forgery; and that, not