untry gentleman in a small way--an
obscure bachelor, abiding from year's end to year's end on my
insignificant farm--have witnessed things in my time, which, had they
been said and done nearer the tropics, would have been cited far and
near in evidence of the turbulence of human passions, and that "the
heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Seeing
that they chanced in a homely parish in Cheshire, no one has been at
the trouble to note their strangeness; though, to own the truth, none
but the actors in the drama (besides myself, a solitary spectator) are
cognizant of its incidents and catastrophe. I might boast, indeed,
that I alone am thoroughly in the secret; for it is the spectator only
who competently judges the effects of a scene; and merely changing the
names, for reasons easily conceivable, I ask leave to relate in the
simplest manner a few facts in evidence of my assertion, that England
has its Capuletti e Montecchi as well as Verona.

In the first place, let me premise that I am neither of a condition of
life, nor condition of mind, to mingle as a friend with those of whose
affairs I am about to treat so familiarly, being far too crotchety a
fellow not to prefer a saunter with my fishing-tackle on my back, or
an evening tete-a-tete with my library of quaint old books, to all the
good men's feasts ever eaten at the cost of a formal country visit.
Nevertheless, I am not so cold of heart as to be utterly devoid of
interest in the destinies of those whose turrets I see peering over
the woods that encircle my corn-fields; and as the good old
housekeeper, who for these thirty years past has presided over my
household, happens to have grandchildren high in service in what are
called the two great families in the neighbourhood, scarcely an event
or incident passes within their walls that does not find an echo in
mine. So much in attestation of my authority. But for such an
introduction behind the scenes, much of the stage business of this
curious drama would have escaped my notice, or remained
incomprehensible.

I am wrong to say the two great "families;" I should have said the two
great "houses." At the close of the last century, indeed, our parish
of Lexley contained but one; one which had stood there since the days
of the first James, nay, even earlier--a fine old manorial hall of
grand dimensions and stately architecture, of the species of mixed
Gothic so false in taste, but so ornamental in