hat a
beautiful house!" "Yes," answered her husband, reining in his horse to
enjoy the view; "it is a lovely place. How would you like, my dear
Sally, to be its mistress?" Sally broke into a merry peal of laughter.
"Only fancy _me_," she said, "mistress of such a noble house! It's too
funny for words. But how I should love it if we were only rich enough to
live in it!" "I am so glad you like it, darling," answered her husband,
as he turned in the saddle and placed an arm around her waist; "for it
is yours. I am the Earl of Exeter, its owner, and you--well, you are my
Countess--and my Queen."

"'Now welcome, Lady!' exclaimed the Earl--
'This Castle is thine, and these dark woods all.'
She believed him wild, but his words were truth,
For Ellen is Lady of Rosenthal."

He did not, like the hero of Moore's ballad, "blow his horn with a
lordly air"; but with his Countess he presented himself at the door of
Burleigh to receive the homage and welcome due to its lord.

"Many a gallant gay domestic
Bow before him at the door;
And they speak in gentle murmur
When they answer to his call,
While he treads with footsteps firmer
Leading on from hall to hall.
And while now she wanders blindly,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Proudly turns he round and kindly,
'All of that is mine and thine.'"

Thus did Sarah Hoggins, the peasant-girl, blossom into a Countess,
chatelaine of three lordly pleasure-houses, and Lady Bountiful to an
army of dependents. The news of the romantic story flashed through the
county, indeed through the whole of England; and great lords and ladies
by the score flocked to Burleigh to welcome and pay homage to its
heroine.

For a few too brief years Countess Sarah was happy in her new and
splendid environment, though it is said she often sighed for the dear
dead days when her husband was a landscape painter, and she his humble
bride in their village home. The modest primrose did not bear well the
transplanting to the lordly hot-house. Her cheeks began to lose their
roses. She bore to her husband three children; and then, "like a lily
drooping, she bowed down her head and died," tenderly and lovingly
nursed to the last breath by the husband whose heart, it is said, died
with her.

Of her two sons, the elder succeeded to his father's Earldom, and was
promoted to a Marquisate. The younger, Lord Thomas Cecil, married a
daughter of the fourth Duke of Richmond--