may be, he now proposed to Lady Anne Howard, whose father,
the Earl of Effingham, was one of his greatest friends.
But he was doomed to a second, though doubtless very
minor, disappointment. Lady Anne, who probably looked on
'grave Carleton' as a sort of amiable, middle-aged uncle,
had fallen in love with his nephew, whom she presently
married, and with whom she afterwards went out to Canada,
where her husband served under the rejected uncle himself.
What added spice to this peculiar situation was the fact
that Carleton actually married the younger sister of the
too-youthful Lady Anne. When Lady Anne rejoined her sister
and their bosom friend, Miss Seymour, after the
disconcerting interview with Carleton, she explained her
tears by saying they were due to her having been 'obliged
to refuse the best man on earth.' 'The more fool you!'
answered the younger sister, Lady Maria, then just
eighteen, 'I only wish he had given me the chance!' There,
for the time, the matter ended. Carleton went back to
his official duties in furtherance of the Quebec Act.
His nephew and the elder sister made mutual love. Lady
Maria held her tongue. But Miss Seymour had not forgotten;
and one day she mustered up courage to tell Carleton the
story of 'the more fool you!' This decided him to act at
once. He proposed; was accepted; and lived happily married
for the rest of his long life. Lady Maria was small,
fair-haired, and blue-eyed, which heightened her girlish
appearance when, like Madame de Champlain, she came out
to Canada with a husband more than old enough to be her
father. But she had been brought up at Versailles. She
knew all the aristocratic graces of the old regime. And