, when we told
her how the thought of Mary Chaworth had led us here from a distant
land. If the owners of Annesley knew that once an exception was made to
a general rule, we trust they also believed that the visitors were not
actuated by an idle curiosity.

Our request being granted, our guide laid aside her plums, and with a
kind hand admitted us into the entrance-hall. It was low and venerable,
with family-portraits on the walls, among them that of the Mr. Chaworth
whom the "wicked Lord Byron" of other days shot in a duel. From the hall
we entered the modern part of the house, harmoniously blended with the
older portion of the building. In the drawing-room, two noble portraits
by Sir Joshua Reynolds arrested our attention. The lady (as Miss Burney
tells us in her journal) was a beauty and a belle of Sir Joshua's time,
and the painter has done justice to his subject, who is drawn at full
length, feeding an eagle,--a spirited, splendid woman, who looks down
from the canvas with bright, triumphant eyes. In the next apartment we
were shown a portrait which touched deeper chords in our heart. It was a
likeness of Mary Chaworth in miniature, representing a mature and
beautiful woman.

"Upon her face there was a tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lids were charged with unshed tears."

The truth of this description startled us, and revealed instantly how
deeply impressed upon the mind of her youthful lover must have been that
face which was the starlight of his boyhood. Tears had passed since they
parted, and chasms of time and gulfs yet deeper and wider than time ever
knows had separated Byron from Annesley and England, and yet, when he
wrote those lines, her face rose before him so clearly, wearing on its
loveliness the impress of care and sorrow which he knew must be there,
that no words but his can truly describe the expression of her features.
Turning to our conductress, we asked if she had ever seen the Lady of
Annesley. "Yes, I knew and loved her well, for I was her maid many
years"; and, with a faltering tone, she added, "she died in my arms."
Genius has immortalized Mary Chaworth; yet the tender and heartfelt
tribute of one who had been the humble, but daily witness of the beauty
of her life, was worth a thousand homilies.

We were conducted through the library, which had been in other days the
drawing-room, out of which opens a small apar