Harrow and Cambridge 



down on each side. She and I were riding together on the 

 right-hand slope. Maunsell was mounted on a handsome, 

 bright bay cob, and certainly he and his mount looked an 

 exceedingly handsome pair, even to the critical eye of a sister. 

 It was with a pardonable feeling of pride that I answered, 

 11 That is my brother Maunsell." As a very small boy she had 

 often seen and spoken to him, but after leaving Elstree for 

 Harrow, he had grown up very rapidly, and changed much in 

 appearance. The tales of his sporting powers at the latter 

 school had evidently reached her ears, for she said, " Oh, then, 

 that is your brother who is such a fine cricketer ? ' She, as I 

 have explained, had now become the reigning Countess of 

 Yarborough, and although not so very much older than 

 Maunsell, then a boy of seventeen, and she a woman of 

 twenty-two, the difference in age to me that day seemed 'so 

 much more marked than it did, or would, in later years. 



But, whether or not before that eventful day when hunting 

 in the woods Lady Yarborough had ever noticed him at all very 

 specially, it is certain that, on his part, and long before that time, 

 he had formed such an opinion of her in his own mind that she 

 so completely came up to his notion of what the most perfect 

 woman in the world should be, that I feel sure he never thought 

 of any other woman as his mate from that time forward. This 

 may sound odd, of course, but there is no doubt that this 

 single-hearted affection of his for the lady destined one day to 

 become his wife, and which she so early inspired in his heart, 

 remained with him all through his life. "If I cannot marry 

 her, then no one,'^ was his unexpressed boyish determination, 

 and no knight of olden time ever kept troth to his own promise 

 more faithfully, or was better rewarded in the end, for his 

 allegiance. 



From Harrow in 1866, when just on twenty years old, my 



67 



