Yet there were some severe enough to
say--and these not unjust persons in other respects--that though
unquestionably innocent of the crime imputed to her, she had shown
an unseemly wantonness in contracting three marriages in such rapid
succession; that the untrue suspicion might have been ordered by
Providence (who often works indirectly) as a punishment for her
self-indulgence. Upon that point I have no opinion to offer.
The reverend the Vice-President, however, the tale being ended,
offered as his opinion that her fate ought to be quite clearly
recognized as a punishment. So thought the Churchwarden, and also
the quiet gentleman sitting near. The latter knew many other
instances in point, one of which could be narrated in a few words.
DAME THE NINTH: THE DUCHESS OF HAMPTONSHIRE
By the Quiet Gentleman
Some fifty years ago, the then Duke of Hamptonshire, fifth of that
title, was incontestibly the head man in his county, and
particularly in the neighbourhood of Batton. He came of the ancient
and loyal family of Saxelbye, which, before its ennoblement, had
numbered many knightly and ecclesiastical celebrities in its male
line. It would have occupied a painstaking county historian a whole
afternoon to take rubbings of the numerous effigies and heraldic
devices graven to their memory on the brasses, tablets, and altar-
tombs in the aisle of the parish-church. The Duke himself, however,
was a man little attracted by ancient chronicles in stone and metal,
even when they concerned his own beginnings.
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