trast of the highly powdered hair, and reposed the ruffles of his left hand upon the glittering hilt of his slender sword with all the grace and affectation that characterized the period; perhaps superadding graces peculiarly his own; for he then rejoiced in the bloom and nonchalance of about his twentieth year.

The family estates were situated in one of the most beautiful of our green and richly wooded midland counties. The chief family seat, Castle Trowley, as it was called, was inhabited by the eldest of three brothers, an old bachelor, who kept up the ancient state of the race in a "bountiful old style." The second brother, who had three daughters, all still children, resided at a handsome residence but a few miles distant, on an estate that had been added in the preceding generation to the ancient hereditary property. There was a feud, however, between the eldest brother and the second, which prevented the latter from ever visiting at the castle. The third brother, who had married very early, had died soon after, and left an only son, my grandfather, who, in default of male issue, to either of the two elder brothers would succeed to the whole of the hereditary acres, and the ancient family seat, Castle Trowley.

Young Rupert, as a youth of good family, and likely to succeed to a fine old estate, was, notwithstanding his then limited income, much petted by the best society, both in London and Paris. At seventeen

he had already emancipated himself from the control and guardianship of his eldest uncle, and quitted the old castle, where he had resided ever since the death of his father. He soon dispensed, too, with the services of the tutor he had consented to take to town with him, on the recommendation of his uncle. About three years of fashionable existence in London and other capitals, though it had not led him, like many others, to exhaust the whole of his pecuniary means, for, in that respect, the rapacity of his first and succeeding valets had taught him to be an excellent manager, had yet made him at twenty an accomplished man of the world; and a man of lavish expenditure, within his means. But, at the same time, his experiences of life had been the means of seriously undermining his health; for though he had discovered the secret of extracting the greatest possible degree of pleasure with the least possible injury to his income, he had not found the management of his constitution so easy a matter; and after those three short years of dissipation, with all the attractions of brilliant courts readily open to him, he was glad to accept an invitation from his guardian to spend a few months at the solitary old castle, in order to recruit his shattered health. Young Rupert was a free-thinker, an esprit fort, and promised himself, during the convalescence that regular living and early hours could not fail to bring about at his age, to enjoy some famous sport in

rallying the old housekeeper and the aged major domo, as a favourite old attendant of his uncle was called, on the famous ghost stories, and other legendary lore connected with the old castle, with which they had often made him shudder as a child, and in which they doubtless still devoutly believed; and chuckling inwardly at the prospect of this fine field for the exercise of his courtly raillery, he set forth for Trowley.

On his arrival, young Rupert found the ancient seat of the family in nowise changed during the three years of his absence: the Elizabethan façade still met the eye of the spectator, on emerging from the avenue of giant elms, with all its fine old palatial air; and behind, rose the gray towers of the original portion of the building, a square heavy castellated pile, of the time of Edward the Third. The family had, in fact, first risen to eminence during the French wars of that epoch. The first Lord of Trowley, Sir Reginald, had been a soldier of fortune; who, first with the king, and afterwards with the Black Prince in Aquitaine and in the Spanish wars, had managed to realize in plunder, in ransoms, and other windfalls of war, such a fortune as enabled him to take rank with the leading nobles; a position which his truly chivalric bearing, (if his portrait in an existing family missal, executed for him at the time, be not greatly flattered,) enabled him to fill with honour; for at that time. personal courage, and courtly bearing, were of much

more social importance than now. He married the beautiful Lady Blanche, the younger daughter of a noble house, who, it is said, had already taken her vows to a monastic life. But regardless of all remonstrance on the part of the church, for he was supported by the Duke of Lancaster, he married the recusant beauty; and great was the feasting and merry-making at Castle Trowley on that occasion, A beautiful image of her fair form, robed in almost queenly state, was wrought in silver, and placed in a niche in the Gothic chapel; and an endowment attached to the fine old Norman church secured four annual masses to be said in perpetuity for her fault. A cunning limner painted her fair features by the side of those of her noble lord in the great family missal, every leaf of which glittered with burnished gold; and her likeness was also wrought into one of the noble pieces of tapestry destined for the state bedchamber of the castle. And those blue eyes and blush-tinted cheeks were enamelled upon family jewels; and the new pictures of the Virgin in the choir of the old church were painted in the lovely semblance of the fair Lady Blanche.

But it is said that the church did not forget her offence; and at last prevailed. For scarcely had she given birth to a son, a year after their marriage, when the Lady Blanche mysteriously disappeared; and none knew how she was spirited away. And the bold

knight became rapidly old; and died soon of a broken heart. And his son, who it was said grew up with the features of his lady mother, succeeded him; and was in his turn succeeded by sons and grandsons. But the fate of the fair Lady Blanche was never forgotten; and a thousand strange and improbable stories concerning her were told, from one generation to another, which, mingling with a host of strange legends and fairy tales, long formed, and in fact still form, the evening small talk of the servants of the house.

The old bachelor Lord of Trowley, resumed the archæologist, met my grandfather on the steps of the great entrance; and received the young scapegrace like the returned prodigal. He was, in fact, delighted with the dashing easy air and perfumed refinement of the young courtier, and led him with considerable pride to the great dining room, where a noble repast had been prepared for his arrival; and where he presented his gay young nephew with almost paternal fondness to the old servants of the castle, arrayed in stately line to receive the honoured guest.

My ancestral uncle's admiration was, however, not quite so great for his darling nephew when he found that the young gentleman could neither do justice to the copious repast spread before him, nor accompany his worthy kinsman in tumbler after tumbler of famous claret, pledging this friend and that at random, as a mere excuse for deep and long accustomed liba