fe and his children, who
had to seek legal protection against him. About a year after the sale
of her splendid home his wife died, and the event is thus spoken of
in a leading journal of the time: "The premature death of an amiable
and accomplished lady born to large possessions, and against whom the
voice of calumny never so much as breathed a slander, calls, we think,
for a passing comment, as illustrating and furnishing, we trust, a
lasting and useful lesson to the heartlessness of too many men of the
present day. With a fortune that made her a prize for princes, this
amiable woman gave her hand and heart to the man of her choice, and
with them all that unbounded wealth could bestow. What her fate has
been all the world knows: what it ought to have been the world is
equally well aware. To her, riches have been worse than poverty; and
her life seems to have been scarified and her heart broken through
the very means that should have cherished and maintained her in the
happiness and splendor which her fortune and disposition were alike
qualified to produce. Let her fate be a warning to all of her sex
who, blessed with affluence, think the buzzing throng which surrounds
them have hearts, when in fact they have none; and if there be such a
feeling as remorse accessible in the quarter where it is most called
for, let the world witness, by a future life of contrition, something
like atonement for the past."

So far, however, as the world could discover, the atonement never
came. Lord Mornington, as he became, actually found another woman to
marry him: he ill-used her, and having sunk into narrow circumstances,
neglected to provide her with the barest necessaries, so that the
applications of the countess of Mornington to the London police
magistrates for assistance became of frequent occurrence. It may
seem strange that the Wellesley family should not have stepped in to
prevent such a scandal. Probably they thought that the woman who in
the teeth of his evil reputation had chosen to marry him should take
the consequences. He died in 1857. His son, whose life his father's
conduct had sadly embittered, did not long survive him, and bequeathed
the remnant of his estates, including Draycot, a large mansion (which
had been strictly entailed) in Wiltshire, to his cousin, Lord Cowley,
then ambassador at Paris. His title passed to the duke of Wellington.

THE FATE OF DANGAN CASTLE.

Lord Cowley, on being created an earl, sele