the Earl's chaise is a distant dark speck in a cloud of dust, at
which the baffled banker impotently shakes his fist.

Before the fallen horse could be removed and the chase resumed the
runaways had got so long a start that they could laugh at further
pursuit; and by the time Child's chaise rattled impotently through the
street of Gretna village, his daughter had been a Countess a good hour.

For three years the banker kept his vow that he would never forgive her
and her shameless husband. The Earl, indeed, he never did forgive, but
his daughter won her way back into his heart, and to her he left the
whole of his colossal fortune, amounting, it is said, to little less
than L100,000 a year.

It was from this romantic union that the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane came,
who was to unite the 'prentice strain of Francis Child with the blood of
the proud Villiers. As a young girl the Lady Sarah needed no such rich
dower as was hers to commend her to the eyes of wooers. From the Fanes
she inherited a full share of the beauty for which their women were
noted, and to it she added many charms of her own. She had a figure,
tall, commanding, and of exquisite grace, eyes blue as violets, a
luxuriant crown of dark hair, and a complexion pure and beautiful as a
lily.

It is little wonder that a young lady so dowered with gold and good
looks should attract lovers by the score, all anxious to win so fair a
prize. But to one only of them all would she listen, Lord Villiers, heir
to the Earldom of Jersey, a man of towering stature and handsome face,
aristocrat and courtier to his finger-tips, a fearless and graceful
rider, and an expert in manly sports. Such a combination of attractions
the daughter of Anne Child could not long, nor was she at all disposed
to, resist. And one May day in 1804--almost twenty-two years to the day
after her parents' dramatic flight to Gretna Green--the Lady Sarah
became Vicountess Villiers. A year later she was Countess of Jersey.

From her first entry into society the child-countess (for she was little
more than a child) took the position of a Queen, to which her rank,
wealth, and beauty entitled her, and which she held, supreme and
unassailable, as long as life lasted. Her _salon_ was a second Royal
Court to which flocked all the greatest in the land, proud to pay homage
to the "Empress of Fashion." She entertained kings with a regal
splendour. Their Majesties of Prussia and Belgium, Holland and Hanover,
and