returned to Henley, it was as the guest of his future father-in-law,
of whose "pious fraud" in the matter of the £10,000 dowry; despite
his shrewdness, he was unaware. Though the sycophantic attorney
would probably as lief have housed a monkey of lineage so
distinguished, old Mrs. Blandy seems really to have adored the foxy
little captain for his _beaux yeux_. Doubtless he fooled the dame to
the top of her bent. For a time things went pleasantly enough in the
old house by the bridge. The town-clerk boasted of his noble quarry,
the mother enjoyed for the first time the company and conversation
of a man of fashion, and Mary renewed amid the Henley meadows those
paradisiacal experiences which formerly she had shared with
faithless Captain D----. But once more her happiness received an
unexpected check. Lord Mark Kerr, a soldier and a gentleman,
becoming aware of the footing upon which his graceless grand-nephew
was enjoying the Blandys' hospitality, wrote to the attorney the
amazing news that his daughter's lover already had a wife and child
living in Scotland.

The facts, so far as we know them, were these. On 22nd May, 1744,
William Henry Cranstoun was privately married at Edinburgh to Anne,
daughter of David Murray, merchant in Leith, a son of the late Sir
David Murray of Stanhope, Baronet. As the lady and her family were
Jacobite and Roman Catholic, the fact of the marriage was not
published at the time for fear of prejudicing the gallant
bridegroom's chances of promotion. The couple lived together "in a
private manner" for some months, and in November the bride returned
to her family, while the captain went to London to resume his
regimental duties. They corresponded regularly by letter. Cranstoun
wrote to his own and the lady's relatives, acknowledging that she
had been his wife since May, but insisting that the marriage should