O and proudly stood she up! Her heart within her did not fail: She look’d into Lord Ronald’s eyes, And told him all her nurse’s tale. He laugh’d a laugh of merry scorn: He turn’d, and kiss’d her where she stood: “If you are not the heiress born, And I,” said he, “the next in blood— “If you are not the heiress born, And I,” said he, “the lawful heir, We two will wed to-morrow morn, And you shall still be Lady Clare.” [1] All up to and including 1850. Brooch. [2] All up to and including 1850. Though. [3] The stanza beginning “The lily-white doe” is omitted in 1842 and 1843, and in the subsequent editions up to and including 1850 begins “A lily-white doe”. [4] In a letter addressed to Tennyson the late Mr. Peter Bayne ventured to object to the dramatic propriety of Lady Clare speaking of herself as “a beggar born”. Tennyson defended it by saying: “You make no allowance for the shock of the fall from being Lady Clare to finding herself the child of a nurse”. But the expression is Miss Ferrier’s: “Oh that she had suffered me to remain the beggar I was born”; and again to her lover: “You have loved an impostor and a beggar”. The Lord of Burleigh Written, as we learn from _Life_, i., 182, by 1835. First published in 1842. No alteration since with the exception of “tho’” for “though”. This poem tells the well-known story of Sarah Hoggins who married under the circumstances related in the poem. She died in January, 1797, sinking, so it was said, but without any authority for such a statement, under the burden of an honour “unto which she was not born”. The story is that Henry Cecil, heir presumptive to his uncle, the ninth Earl of Exeter, was staying at Bolas, a rural village in Shropshire, where he met Sarah Hoggins and married her. They lived together at Bolas, where the two eldest of his children were born, for two years before he came into the title. She bore him two other children after she was Countess of Exeter, dying at Burleigh House near Stamford at the early age of twenty-four. The obituary notice runs thus: “January, 1797. At Burleigh House near Stamford, aged twenty-four, to the inexpressible surprise and concern of all acquainted with her, the Right Honbl. Countess of Exeter.” For full information about this romantic incident see Walford’s _Tales of Great Families_, first series, vol. i., 65-82, and two interesting papers signed W. O. Woodall in _Notes and Queries_, seventh series, vol. xii., 221-23; _ibid_., 281-84, and Napier’s _Homes and Haunts of Tennyson_, 104-111.