is this
the writer of the tale should be able to make his points so clear
by words that no further assistance should be needed, I should be
tempted here to insert a properly illustrated pedigree tree of the
Marrable family. The Marrable family is of very old standing in
England, the first baronet having been created by James I., and there
having been Marrables,--as is well known by all attentive readers of
English history,--engaged in the Wars of the Roses, and again others
very conspicuous in the religious persecutions of the children of
Henry VIII. I do not know that they always behaved with consistency;
but they held their heads up after a fashion, and got themselves
talked of, and were people of note in the country. They were
cavaliers in the time of Charles I. and of Cromwell,--as became men
of blood and gentlemen,--but it is not recorded of them that they
sacrificed much in the cause; and when William III. became king they
submitted with a good grace to the new order of things. A certain Sir
Thomas Marrable was member for his county in the reigns of George I.
and George II., and enjoyed a lucrative confidence with Walpole. Then
there came a blustering, roystering Sir Thomas, who, together with a
fine man and gambler as a heir, brought the property to rather a low
ebb; so that when Sir Gregory, the grandfather of our Miss Marrable,
came to the title in the early days of George III. he was not a rich
man. His two sons, another Sir Gregory and a General Marrable, died
long before the days of which we are writing,--Sir Gregory in 1815,
and the General in 1820. That Sir Gregory was the second of the
name,--the second at least as mentioned in these pages. He had been
our Miss Marrable's uncle, and the General had been her father, and
the father of Mrs. Lowther,--Mary's mother. A third Sir Gregory
was reigning at the time of our story, a very old gentleman with
one single son,--a fourth Gregory. Now the residence of Sir
Gregory was at Dunripple Park, just on the borders of Warwickshire
and Worcestershire, but in the latter county. The property was
small,--for a country gentleman with a title,--not much exceeding
L3000 a year; and there was no longer any sitting in Parliament, or
keeping of race-horses, or indeed any season in town for the present
race of Marrables. The existing Sir Gregory was a very quiet man, and
his son and only child, a man now about forty years of age, lived
mostly at home, and occupied himself with