if I were not to relate the
tragedy which conferred on Dangerfield the honour of being a haunted
house.

In the reign of George II, the head of the house, Sir Hugh Horsingham,
married a young wife, and brought her home to Dangerfield with the
usual demonstrations and rejoicings peculiar to such an event. Sir
Hugh was a dark, morose man, considerably older than his bride; stern
and forbidding in his manners, but possessing deep feelings under a
reserved exterior, and a courage and determination not to be daunted
or subdued. Such a man was capable of great things for good or for
evil; and such was the very nature on which a woman's influence might
have produced the most beneficial results. But, unfortunately, young
Lady Horsingham had but one feeling for her lord, and that was intense
terror of his anger. She never sought to win his confidence; she never
entered into his political schemes, his deeper studies, or even his
country amusements and pursuits. All she thought of was how to avoid
offending Sir Hugh; and ere long this one idea grew to such a pitch
that she quite trembled in his presence, could scarcely answer
distinctly when he spoke to her, and seemed hardly to draw breath in
freedom save when out of his sight. Such a state of things could have
but one ending--distrust and suspicion on one side, unqualified
aversion on the other. A marriage, never of inclination, as indeed in
those days amongst great families few marriages were, became an
insupportable slavery ere the first year of wedded life had elapsed;
and by the time an heir was born to the house of Horsingham, probably
there was no unhappier couple within fifty miles of Dangerfield than
dark Sir Hugh and his pretty, fair-haired, gentle wife. No; she ought
never to have married him at all. It was but the night before her
wedding that she walked in the garden of her father's old manor-house
with a bright, open-hearted, handsome youth, whose brow wore that
expression of acute agony which it is so pitiable to witness on a
young countenance--that look almost of _physical_ pain, which betokens
how the iron has indeed "entered the sufferer's soul." "Ah, you may
plead, 'Cousin Edward;' but we women are of a strange mixture, and
_the weakest_ of us may possess _obstinacy_ such as no earthly
consideration can overcome." "Lucy! Lucy! for _the last_ time, think
of it; for the love of Heaven, do not drive me mad; think of it once
more; it is the last, _last_ chance!" T