ll the birds of the
bird-dealers in London, and fixing their cages in the
trees, made her grounds one great orchestra of Nature's
music."

When her Grace died, universally beloved and regretted, in 1837, she
proved her gratitude and loyalty to her banker-husband by leaving all
she possessed, a fortune now swollen to L1,800,000, to Miss Angela
Coutts (grand-daughter of Thomas Coutts and his first wife, Eliza Stark,
a domestic servant) who, as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts of later years,
proved by her large munificence a worthy trustee and dispenser of such
vast wealth.

Such are but a few of the romantic alliances between the peerage and the
stage, of which, during the last score of years, since Miss Connie
Gilchrist blossomed into the Countess of Orkney and Miss Belle Bilton
into my Lady Clancarty, there has been such an epidemic.

CHAPTER XX

A PEASANT COUNTESS

In the dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore
traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna,
which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in
the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league
under a burning sun, and was too weary to fare farther. Moreover, night
was closing in fast, and a few hissing raindrops and the distant rumble
of thunder warned him that a storm was about to break.

He must find some sort of shelter for the night; and among the few
thatch-covered cottages in whose windows lights were beginning to
twinkle, his steps led him to a modest farmhouse behind the small
village church. In answer to his knock, the door was opened by a burly,
pleasant-faced farmer, of whom the stranger craved a refuge from the
storm until the morning, and a little food for which he offered to pay
handsomely. "I shall be grateful for even a chair to sit on," added the
weary traveller, when the farmer protested that he had no accommodation
to offer him.

"Very well," said the farmer, relenting. "Come in, and we'll do the
best we can for you. It's going to be a bad night, not fit to turn a dog
out in, much less a gentleman; and I can see you're that." And a few
minutes later the grateful stranger was seated in Farmer Hoggins's cosy
kitchen before a steaming plate of stew, while the thunder crashed
overhead and the rain dashed in a deluge against the window-panes.

Thus dramatically opened one of the most romantic chapters in the story
of the Briti