with but three or four changes almost too slight to require
acknowledging, I have given it word for word as the friend
to whom it came set it down for me._




CHAPTER I.


_FATHER, CHILD, AND NURSE._

It would be but stirring a muddy pool to inquire--not what motives
induced, but what forces compelled sir Wilton Lestrange to marry a woman
nobody knew. It is enough to say that these forces were mainly ignoble,
as manifested by their intermittent character and final cessation. The
_mesalliance_ occasioned not a little surprise, and quite as much
annoyance, among the county families,--failing, however, to remind any
that certain of their own grandmothers had been no better known to the
small world than lady Lestrange. It caused yet more surprise, though less
annoyance, in the clubs to which sir Wilton had hitherto been indebted
for help to forget his duties: they set him down as a greater idiot than
his friends had hitherto imagined him. For had he not been dragged to the
altar by a woman whose manners and breeding were hardly on the level of a
villa in St. John's Wood? Did any one know whence she sprang, or even the
name which sir Wilton had displaced with his own? But sir Wilton himself
was not proud of his lady; and if the thing had been any business of
theirs, it would have made no difference to him; he would none the less
have let them pine in their ignorance. Did not his mother, a lady less
dignified than eccentric, out of pure curiosity beg enlightenment