bric. The
insteps do not belie the tradition that a kitten could lie beneath the
arch of the wearer's naked foot, for they are so high that it seems as
if the blue blood of the Pierreponts were accompanied with physical
deformity.

These are relics of Lady Mary, and were probably left at her husband's
heritage of Wharncliffe, in Yorkshire, when the first happiness of her
married life had come to an end, and before she became engaged in those
famous travels which, by their result--the introduction of inoculation
for the smallpox--raised her even to a greater eminence than that given
by her intellectual ability.

She was born of a family that had already produced two men of splendid
genius, whose names are written in golden letters in the annals of
literature: Beaumont, the dramatist, who wrote, in collaboration with
his friend Fletcher, some plays that are considered by our best critics
as inferior only to Shakespeare's, was related by his mother to the
Pierreponts of the Elizabethan age; and Henry Fielding, the novelist,
was Lady Mary's second cousin. She is said to have written in her copy
of _Tom Jones_ as fine a tribute to an author's power as could be
desired--simply the words _Ne plus ultra_. Villiers, the notorious Duke
of Buckingham, whose end served Pope for some of his best satirical
verse, was also of the same stock.

[Illustration: THORESBY]

It was at Thoresby that Lady Mary's strange love affair with the
handsome Mr. Edward Wortley, of Wharncliffe Chase--the abode of the
Dragon of Wantley--began, and after many difficulties ended in one of
the most mysterious marriages that ever puzzled literary students. When
a girl of fourteen she met the gentleman at a party, and was delighted
with the attraction which he found in her conversation. She became a
particular friend of his sister, with whom she commenced a sentimental
correspondence--most of the letters, it may be said, being written by
Wortley himself. He became, through the vehicle of the complacent Miss
Anne, her guide and philosopher, and soon we find him answering certain
precocious queries about Latin. Then jealousy appeared--somebody had
escorted Lady Mary to Nottingham Races! The flattered young beauty begs
to know the name of the man she loves, "that I may (according to the
laudable custom of lovers) sigh to the woods and groves hereabouts, and
teach it to the echoes". Thereupon Wortley's inclinations were made
known, and she replied: "To be ca