some weeks. Francis Blandy was much affected by the loss of his
wife. At first he seems to have raised no objection to Cranstoun's
visit, but soon Mary had to complain of the "unkind things" which
her father said both to her lover and herself. There was still no
word from Scotland, except a "very civil" letter of condolence from
my Lady Cranstoun, accompanied by a present of kippered
salmon--apparently intended as an antidote to grief; but though the
old man was gratified by such polite attentions, his mind was far
from easy. He was fast losing all faith in the vision of that
splendid alliance by which he had been so long deluded, and did not
care to conceal his disappointment from the person mainly
responsible.

On this visit mention was first made by Cranstoun of the fatal
powder of which we shall hear so much. Miss Blandy states that,
_apropos_ to her father's unpropitious attitude, her lover
"acquainted her of the great skill of the famous Mrs. Morgan," a
cunning woman known to him in Scotland, from whom he had received a
certain powder, "which she called love-powders"--being, as appears,
the Scottish equivalent to the _poculum amatorium_ or love philtre
of the Romans. Mary said she had no faith in such things, but
Cranstoun assured her of its efficacy, having once taken some
himself, and immediately forgiven a friend to whom he had intended
never to speak again. "If I had any of these powders," said he, "I
would put them into something Mr. Blandy should drink." Such is
Mary's account of the inception of the design upon her father's
love--or life. There for the time matters rested.

"Before he left Henley for the last time," writes Lady Russell, to
whose interesting account we shall later refer, "Captain Cranstoun