ur conduct on this very remarkable
occasion--perfectly warranted,' replied the professor. 'It is an
unexampled instance of greatness, of liberality of mind, and as such I
must always look on it.'

Thus, then, terminated this extraordinary scene. It was subsequently
arranged that the marriage of the earl should, in the meantime, be kept
as secret as possible, and that the young countess should, in the
interim, be sent for a year or two to one of the most celebrated
seminaries of female education in England, under an assumed name, and
that, when she should have acquired the attainments and the polish
befitting her high station, she should be produced to the world as the
Countess of Wistonbury.

Acting upon this plan of proceedings, the same carriage that brought
down the earl's mother, bore away, on the following day, together with
that lady, the young earl and his bride; the latter, to commence her
educational noviciate in England; the former, to while away the time as
he best could until that noviciate should expire, a period which he
proposed to render less irksome by a tour on the continent.

About two years after the occurrence of the events just related--it
might be more, perhaps nearly three--Oxton Hall presented a scene of
prodigious confusion and bustle. Little carts of provender were daily
seen making frequent visits to the house. Huge old grates, in deserted
kitchens, that had not been in use for a century before, were cleared of
their rubbish, and glowing with blazing fires, at which enormous roasts
were solemnly revolving. Menials were running to and fro in all
directions, and a crowd of powdered and richly-liveried lackeys bustled
backwards and forwards through the gorgeous apartments, loaded with
silver plate, and bearing huge baskets of wine. Everything at Oxton
Hall, in short, betokened preparations for a splendid fete--and such, in
truth, was the case. To this fete all the nobility and gentry, within a
circuit of ten to fifteen miles were invited; and such an affair it
promised to be, altogether, as had not been seen at Oxton Hall since the
marriage of the last earl--a period of nearly thirty years. None of
those invited knew, or could guess, what was the particular reason for
so extensive a merry-making. Its scale, they learned, was most
magnificent, and the invitations unprecedentedly numerous.

The whole affair was thus somewhat of a puzzle to the good people who
were to figure as guests at the im