world--are acquainted with her past, it is a strange one, and may well
give her that thoughtful air.
Lady Lisgard, of Mirk Abbey, has looked at life from a far other
station than that which she now occupies. When a man of fortune does not
materially increase his property by marriage, we call the lady of his
choice, although she may have a few thousand pounds of her own, “a
girl without a sixpence.” But Sir Robert Lisgard did literally make
a match of this impecunious sort. Moreover, he married a very
“unsuitable young person;” by which expression you will understand
that he was blamed, not for choosing a bride very much junior to
himself, but for not selecting her from the proper circles. When
accidentally interrogated by blundering folks respecting her ancestry,
the baronet used good-humouredly to remark, that his wife was the
daughter of Neptune and Thetis. When asked for her maiden name, he would
reply drily: “She was a Miss Anna Dyomene;” for the simple fact
was, that she had been thrown up almost at his feet by the sea--the sole
survivor of a crowded emigrant-ship that went to pieces before his
eyes while he was staying one stormy autumn at a sea-side village in the
South. Lashed to a spar, the poor soul came ashore one terrible night in
a very insufficient costume, so as to excite the liveliest compassion
in all beholders. There was a subscription got up among some visitors of
fashion to supply her with a wardrobe; and they do say that Sir Robert
Lisgard's name is still to be seen set down with the rest of the
benevolent donors, for five pounds, in the list that is kept among the
archives of the village post-office.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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