ival in England her jewels and valuable knicknacks, including her own
portrait drawn in green--a circumstance which obtained for the
original the designation of the "Green Lady," and Thorpe Hall has long
been said to be haunted by the lady in green, who has been in the
habit of appearing beneath a particular tree close to the mansion.

A story, which has been gracefully told in one of Moore's Irish
Melodies, relates to Henry Cecil, Earl of Exeter, who early in life
fell in love with the rich heiress of the Vernons of Hanbury. A
marriage was eventually arranged, but this union proved a complete
failure, and terminated in a divorce. Thereupon young Cecil,
distrustful of the conventionalities of society, and to prevent any
one of the fair sex marrying him on account of his position, resolved
"on laying aside the artificial attractions of his rank, and seeking
some country maiden who would wed him from disinterested motives of
affection."

Accordingly he took up his abode at a small inn in a retired
Shropshire village, but even here his movements created suspicion,
"some maintaining that he was connected with smugglers or gamesters,
while all agreed that dishonesty or fraud was the cause of the mystery
of the 'London gentleman's' proceedings." Annoyed at the rude
molestations to which he was daily, more or less, exposed, he quitted
the inn and removed to a farm-house in the neighbourhood, where he
remained for two years, in the course of which time he purchased some
land, and commenced building himself a house:

But the landlord of the cottage where he lived had a beautiful
daughter of about seventeen years, to whom young Cecil became so
deeply attached that, in spite of her humble birth, and simple
education, he resolved to make her his wife, taking an early
opportunity of informing her parents of his resolve. The matter came
as a surprise to the farmer and his wife, and all the more so because
they had always regarded Mr. Cecil as far too grand a person to
entertain such an idea.

"Marry our daughter?" exclaimed the good wife, in amazement. "What, to
a fine gentleman! No, indeed!"

"Yes, marry her," added the husband, "he shall marry her, for she
likes him. Has he not house and land, too, and plenty of money to keep
her?"

So the rustic beauty was married, and it was not long afterwards that
her husband found it necessary to repair to town on account of the
Earl of Exeter's death. Setting out, as the young bride t