The younger son of a Nova Scotia baronet, under promise of marriage, betrayed the only surviving daughter of a Northumbrian yeoman of ancient and respectable family, nearly allied to a peer, so created in William the Fourth’s reign. She was a person of rare beauty and of considerable accomplishments, having received an education of a very superior character in Edinburgh. After her betrayal she was deserted by her lover, who fled abroad. The night before he left, however, at her earnest request, he met her in company with a friend with the avowed intention of promising marriage in the future, when his family (as he declared) might be less averse to it. After-events show that this was merely an empty promise, and that he had no intention of fulfilling it. A long discussion took place between the girl and her betrayer, in the presence of the female friend in question, a first cousin of her father. High words, strong phrases, and sharp upbraidings were uttered on both sides; until at last the young man in cruel and harsh language, turning upon her fiercely, declared that he would never marry her at all, and held himself, as he maintained, perfectly free to wed whom he should choose. “You will be my certain death,” she exclaimed, “but death will be more welcome than life.” “Die and be ----,” he replied. At this the girl, with a wail of agony, swooned away. On her recovery she seemed to gather up her strength to pronounce a Curse upon him and his. It was spoken in the Name of the One Living and True God. She uttered it with deliberation, yet with wildness and bitterness, maintaining that she was his wife, and would haunt him to the day of his death; declaring at the same time to her relation present, “And you shall be the witness.” He left the place of meeting without any reconciliation or kind word, and, it was believed, went abroad. In less than five months, in giving birth to her child, she died, away from her home, and was buried with it (for the child, soon after its baptism, died likewise) in a village churchyard near Ambleside. Neither stone nor memorial marks the grave. Her father, a widower, wounded to the quick by the loss of his only daughter, pined away and soon followed her to his last resting-place.