t Lord Abinger's eldest daughter was indebted to her
husband for an honor that made him her social inferior. Many readers
will remember a droll story of a misapprehension caused by her
ladyship's title. During an official journey, Sir John Campbell and
Baroness Stratheden slept at lodgings which he had frequently occupied
as a circuiteer. On the morning after his arrival, the landlady obtained
a special interview with Campbell, and in the baroness's absence thus
addressed him, with mingled indignation and respectfulness:--"Sir John
Campbell, I am a lone widow, and live by my good name. It is not in my
humble place to be too curious about the ladies brought to my lodgings
by counsellors and judges. It is not in me to make remarks if a
counsellor's lady changes the color of her eyes, and her complexion
every assizes. But, Sir John, a gentleman ought not to bring a lady to a
lone widow's lodgings, unless so long as he 'okkipies' the apartments he
makes all honorable professions that the lady is his wife, and as such
gives her the use of his name."

CHAPTER VIII.

REJECTED ADDRESSES.

No lawyer of the Second Charles's time surpassed Francis North in love
of money, or was more firmly resolved not to marry, without due and
substantial consideration.

His first proposal was for the daughter of a Gray's Inn money-lender.
Usury was not a less contemptible vocation in the seventeenth century
than it is at the present time; and most young barristers of gentle
descent and fair prospects would have preferred any lot to the
degradation of marriage with the child of the most fortunate usurer in
Charles II.'s London. But the Hon. Francis North was placed comfortably
_beneath_ the prejudices of his order and time of life. He was of noble
birth, but quite ready to marry into a plebeian family; he was young,
but loved money more than aught else. So his hearing was quickened and
his blood beat merrily when, one fine morning, "there came to him a
recommendation of a lady, who was an only daughter of an old usurer in
Gray's Inn, supposed to be a good fortune in present, for her father was
rich; but, after his death, to become worth, nobody could tell what."
One would like to know how that 'recommendation of a lady' reached the
lawyer's chambers; above all, who sent it?

"His lordship," continues Roger North, "got a sight of the lady, and did
not dislike her; thereupon he made the old man a visit, and a proposal
of himself to ma