stately lady had been a wild, fanciful girl, with the merriest laugh and the quickest tear, filling the air round her with April sunshine. Certainly, no beings ever yet lived the life Nature intended them to live, nor had fair play for heart and mind, who contrived, by hook or by crook—to marry the wrong person!
CHAPTER VIII.
Great was the family gathering that Christmas tide at Montfort Court. Thither flocked the cousins of the House in all degrees and of various ranks. From dukes who had nothing left to wish for that kings and cousinhoods can give, to briefless barristers and aspiring cornets, of equally good blood with the dukes—the superb family united its motley scions. Such reunions were frequent, they belonged to the hereditary policy of the House of Vipont. On this occasion the muster of the clan was more significant than usual; there was a "crisis" in the constitutional history of the British empire. A new Government had been suddenly formed within the last six weeks, which certainly portended some direful blow on our ancient institutions, for the House of Vipont had not been consulted in its arrangements, and was wholly unrepresented in the Ministry, even by a lordship of the Treasury. Carr Vipont had therefore summoned the patriotic and resentful kindred.
It is an hour or so after the conclusion of dinner. The gentlemen have joined the ladies in the state suite—a suite which the last Marquis had rearranged and redecorated in his old age—during the long illness that finally conducted him to his ancestors. During his earlier years that princely Marquis had deserted Montfort Court for a seat nearer to London, and therefore much more easily filled with that brilliant society of which he had been long the ornament and centre. Railways not then existing for the annihilation of time and space, and a journey to a northern country four days with post-horses, making the invitations even of a Marquis of Montfort unalluring to languid beauties and gouty ministers. But nearing the end of his worldly career, this long neglect of the dwelling identified with his hereditary titles smote the conscience of the illustrious sinner. And other occupations beginning to pall, his lordship, accompanied and cheered by a chaplain, who had a fine taste in
