dged by her to
whom it was paid. Nothing could be more captivating than the modest,
winning sweetness of her smile, nothing more pleasing to behold than the
gentle grace of her every motion. On all present the impression was that
she was a woman of birth, education, and high breeding, and nothing in
the part she subsequently acted tended in the slightest degree to affect
this idea. The young and lovely countess conducted herself throughout
the whole of this eventful evening, as she did throughout the remainder
of her life, with the most perfect propriety; and thus evinced that the
pains taken to fit Jessy Flowerdew for the high station to which a
singular good fortune had called her, was very far from having been
taken in vain.

At the conclusion of the banquet, the earl entreated the indulgence of
the company for an absence for himself and the countess of a quarter of
an hour. This being of course readily acquiesced in, the earl and his
beauteous young wife were seen, arm and arm, on the lawn, going towards
the tables at which his tenantry were enjoying his hospitality. Here he
went through precisely the same ceremony of introduction with that which
we have described as having taken place in the banquet-hall; and here it
was greeted with the same enthusiasm, and acknowledged by the countess
with the same grace and propriety. This proceeding over, the earl and
his young bride returned to their party, when one of the most joyous
evenings followed that the banqueting-room of Oxton Hall had ever
witnessed. There is only now to add, that Jessy Flowerdew's subsequent
conduct as Countess of Wistonbury proved her in every respect worthy of
the high place to which she had been elevated. A mildness and gentleness
of disposition, and a winning modesty of demeanour, which all the wealth
and state with which she was surrounded could not in the slightest
degree impair, distinguished her through life; and no less distinguished
was she by the generosity and benevolence of her nature, a nature which
her change of destiny was wholly unable to pervert."

Such, then, good reader, is the history of the lady whose portrait, in
which she appears habited in a Scottish plaid, adorns, with others, the
walls of the picture gallery of Oxton Hall, in Wiltshire.

MIDSIDE MAGGY;

OR,

THE BANNOCK O' TOLLISHILL.

"Every bannock had its maik, but the bannock o' Tollishill."
_Scottish Pro