ted her
high-placed lovers by the score almost before she had graduated into
long frocks; and Charles, sixth Earl of Strathmore, was accounted the
luckiest man north of the Tweed when he won her for his bride.

It was an ideal union, this of the beautiful Lady Susanna with the
stalwart and handsome young Earl--"the fairest lass and bonniest lad" in
all Scotland; and none who saw their radiant happiness on their
wedding-day could have dreamt how soon tragedy was to close so bright a
chapter of romance.

For a few short years the young Earl and his Countess were ideally
happy.

"I never thought," Lady Strathmore wrote to a friend,
"that life could be so sweet. The days are all too short
to crowd my happiness into."

Then, when the sky was fairest, the blow fell.

One May day in the year 1728, the young Earl went to Forfar to attend
the funeral of a friend, and among his fellow-mourners were two men of
his acquaintance, James Carnegie, of Finhaven, and a Mr Lyon, of
Brigton, the latter a distant relative of the Earl.

After the funeral the three men sat drinking together, as was the custom
of the time, and then adjourned to a tavern in Forfar, where they
continued their potations until all three were, beyond all doubt, in an
advanced state of intoxication, and ripe for any mischief.

From the tavern they went, uproariously drunk, to call on a sister of
Carnegie, where Mr Lyon not only became quarrelsome, but with drunken
jocularity, had the audacity to pinch his hostess's arms. It was with
the utmost difficulty that Lord Strathmore induced his two companions to
leave the house, in which one of them had so far forgotten what was due
from him as a gentleman; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that an
unseemly brawl began almost as soon as they were in the street.

Mr Lyon began to conduct himself more outrageously than before, now that
the modified restraint of a lady's presence was removed. With boisterous
horseplay, he pushed Carnegie into a deep gutter which ran by the
roadside, and from which Carnegie emerged covered with mud and raging
with fury. Such an insult could only be wiped out with blood; and,
drawing his sword, Carnegie rushed at his tormentor. The Earl, in order
to avert a tragedy, imprudently threw himself between the two
antagonists, with the intention of diverting the blow. Carnegie's sword
entered his body, passing clean through it; and he fell to the ground a
dying man. Two hou