family which had become Tory in politics.

Lady Flora Hastings was a daughter of the Marquis of Hastings and of Flora,
Countess of Loudoun, in her own right. The Countess of Loudoun in her youth
chose for her husband Earl Moira, one of the plainest-looking and most
gallant officers in the British army. The parting shortly after their
marriage, in order that he might rejoin his regiment on active service, was
the occasion of the popular Scotch song, by Tannahill, "Bonnie Loudoun's
woods and braes." Earl Moira, created Marquis of Hastings, had a
distinguished career as a soldier and statesman, especially as
Governor-General of India. When he was Governor-General of Malta he died
far from Loudoun's woods and braes, and was buried in the little island;
but in compliance with an old promise to his wife, who long survived him,
that their dust should rest together, he directed that after death his
right hand should be cut off, enclosed in a casket, and conveyed to the
family vault beneath the church of Loudoun, where the mortal remains of his
widow would lie.

Lady Flora Hastings was good, clever and accomplished, dearly loved by her
family and friends. But whether she, nevertheless, possessed capabilities
of offending her companions in office at Court; whether her conduct in any
respect rebuked theirs, and provoked dislike, suspicion, and a desire to
find her in the wrong; whether the calamity was sheerly due to that mortal
meanness in human nature, which tempts people not otherwise unworthy to
receive the most unlikely and injurious evil report of their neighbour, on
the merest presumptive evidence, the unhappy sequel remains the same. Lady
Flora had been attacked by an illness which caused so great a change in her
personal appearance, as to lend colour to a whispered charge that she had
been secretly guilty of worse than levity of conduct. The cruel whisper
once breathed, it certainly became the duty of every person in authority