assortment of debts; still, one cannot have everything. The rights
of absent Captain D---- were forgotten, now that there was a chance
to marry his daughter to a man who called the daughter of an Earl
grandmother, and could claim kinship with half the aristocracy of
Scotland; and Mr. Blandy frowned as he called to mind the
presumption of the Bath apothecary.

How far matters went at this time we do not know, for Cranstoun left
Henley in the autumn and did not revisit "The Paradise" till the
following summer. Meanwhile Captain D---- returned from abroad, but
unaccountably failed to communicate with the girl he had the year
before so reluctantly left behind him. Mary's uncles, "desirous of
renewing a courtship which they thought would turn much to the
honour and benefit of their niece," intervened; but Captain D----,
though "polite and candid," declined to renew his pretensions, and
the affair fell through. Whether or not he had heard anything of the
Cranstoun business does not appear.

According to Miss Blandy's _Own Account_, it was not until their
second meeting at Lord Mark Kerr's in the summer of 1747 that the
patrician but unattractive Cranstoun declared his passion. She also
states that in doing so he referred to an illicit entanglement with
a Scottish lady, falsely claiming to be his wedded wife, and that
she (Mary) accepted him provisionally, "till the invalidity of the
pretended marriage appeared to the whole world." But here, as we
shall presently see, the fair authoress rather antedates the fact.
Next day Cranstoun, formally proposing to the old folks for their
daughter's hand, was received by them literally with open arms,
henceforth to be treated as a son; and when, after a six weeks'
visit to Bath in company with his gouty kinsman, the captain