In one of these metropolitan suburbs, no matter which, stood and stands the house which at the period of our story was George Wainwright's home, the residence of his father, Dr. Wainwright. It was a big, long, rambling, red-faced old house, with an enormous number of rooms, some large and some small, standing in the midst of a large garden. Tradition said that it had been a favourite residence of Cromwell's; but it was generally believed, and the belief was not ill-founded, that it had been given by the Lord Protector to the husband of his favourite daughter, and that he himself had frequently been in the habit of staying there. At the end of the first quarter of the present century it had a very different occupant from the grim old Ironsides leader, being rented by the Countess Delia Crusca, the wittiest, the most beautiful, the most extravagant, the most fascinating woman of her day. Old Knaves of Clubs still _raffolent_ about the Delia Crusca, her eyes and her poems, her bust and her repartees. She had a husband?--Oh yes! the Count Delia Crusca, ex-officer of Bersaglieri and one of the first naturalists of his day, corresponding member of all the principal European societies, and perfectly devoted to his favourite pursuit; so devoted, that he was invariably away in some distant foreign country, engaged in hunting for specimens. The Countess was an Englishwoman, daughter of Captain Ramus, half-pay, educated at a convent in Paris, under the guidance of her maternal aunt, Miss Coghlan, of Letterkenney in Ireland. Immediately on issuing from the convent she eloped with Count Della Crusca, whose acquaintance she had made in a casual manner in the _coupé_ of one of the diligences belonging to Messrs. Lafitte, Caillard et Cie. A very short time served to prove to them that they had no tastes in common. Madame la Comtesse did not care for natural history, which the Count loved, and she did care for England, which the Count loathed. So he went his way, in pursuit of specimens, and she went hers to England. She arrived in London, and Marston Moor House being to let, she took it.