but of Dorothy's descendant in the direct line, the Duke of Rutland.

"All things," they say "are fair in love as in war;" and so John Manners is said to have disguised himself as a woodman, or forester, and to have remained in various hiding places in the woods around Haddon for several weeks, in order to obtain stolen glances of Miss Dorothy, and, no doubt, occasional meetings with her when the Duenna was not "on guard." At length on one festive night at Haddon, perhaps at one of the merry-makings consequent on her sister's marriage, when everybody was busy in amusing the guests from the neighbourhood, Miss Dorothy is said to have quietly stolen away, unobserved, in the midst of the merriment, and to have passed out of the door of the anteroom on to the garden terrace, which still forms one of the chief features of the hall. She crossed the terrace, ran swiftly down the steps and across the lawn, and so down to the foot bridge over the Derwent, where she was speedily locked in her lover's arms. Horses, of course, were in waiting with trusty attendants, one of whom was left behind, to put papa off the scent in case of a pursuit.

On and on they rode through the moonlight on that bright August night, and early next morn

ing they were married at a church just across the borders of the county, in Leicestershire.

The door through which the heiress of Haddon eloped on that memorable night with "plain John Manners" is still always pointed out to all who visit Haddon as "Dorothy Vernon's door." It is not enriched with splendid carvings, nor is to be distinguished from many other doorways in our old baronial halls and moated granges; but I fancy that somehow or other his Grace of Rutland and Lord John Manners can hardly look without some feeling of personal interest on the gate through which, a little more than three hundred years ago, passed not only the lovely Lady Dorothy, but with her the fine manor and all its broad lands, into the hands of the noble family of Manners, who are, or ought to be, nearly as proud of Haddon as they are of princely Belvoir.

John and Dorothy Manners, it may be as well to add here, lived happily ever afterwards. Children were born to them, and their eldest son, Sir George Manners, added to the family fortunes by his marriage with Grace, daughter of Sir Henry Pierrepont, a near relative of the once ducal house of Kingston. The Lady Grace, as Church informs us,

a monument in Bakewell

"bore to her husband four sons and five

daughters, and lived with him in holy wedlock for upwards of thirty years." On her husband's death, she caused him to be buried with his forefathers, and then placed a monument to his memory at her own expense, as a perpetual memorial of their conjugal faith, and joined the figure of his body with hers, having vowed that their ashes and bones should be laid together.

Such of our readers as care for genealogical details may be glad to know that, although Dorothy Vernon herself never wore the strawberry leaves of the coronet of a duchess, yet in the long run she became the direct ancestress of the Dukes of Rutland. Her grandson John succeeded as the eighth Earl of Rutland on the death of his cousin, in 1641; and her greatgrandson, John, the ninth earl, was created Marquis of Granby and Duke of Rutland in 1703. This Duke's grandson was the celebrated commander-in-chief of the British forces who served with Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick in Germany, and whose face as "the Marquis of Granby" is so familiar on our village signboards. The "Marquis" unhappily died before his father; but his son Charles, the fourth duke, a nobleman most popular as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in the days of Pitt and Fox, was the grandfather of

the present Duke, who has inherited both Belvoir Castle, once the seat of the Lords de Roos, and Haddon Hall, the ancient home of the Vernons.

144

AN ECCENTRIC LADY.

THA

HAT "Truth is stranger than fiction" is an axiom of which the justice is generally acknowledged, but so seldom realised that whenever we hear of some event rather out of the common course occurring to any of our friends, we find ourselves involuntarily describing it as being "like a romance!" And yet the wildest work of fiction ever penned has rarely contained incidents more extraordinarily improbable than than those which have marked the career of the heroine of our present story, and which little edifying in many respects although they be may nevertheless serve

"To point a moral and adorn a tale.”

Jane Elizabeth, Lady Ellenborough, if we may trust the matter-of-fact pages of Lodge's Peerage,