EXTRAORDINARY INFATUATION OF A DEVONSHIRE HEIRESS.

Otago Witness, Issue 642, 19 March 1864, Page 17

EXTRAORDINARY INFATUATION OF A DEVONSHIRE HEIRESS.

Gos3ip has been busy for some weeks past with an instance of infatuation on the part of a young lady, which bears out the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction. The names of the parties in question are known to us, but the object of withholding them will be obvious, although the correctness of the incidents narrated is guaranteed. Miss Nemo, as we shall call er, is the daughter of a clergyman and a doctor of divinity, not long dead, and who resided at his rectory in the county of Devon. Nemo is about 25 years of age, good looking, and accomplished, and it caused no small trouble to the family some time previous to her father's death to find that she had formed a clandestine acquaintance with a stonemason to whom was entrusted the repair of her father's church. On this discovery Nemo was sent to Exeter to reside with a brother, that there might be broken the tie she had formed. Only a short time afterwards she eloped with her v lover of low degree" to H , where she remained with his friends until the marriage preliminaries could be arranged. On the morning fixed ior the wedding, the bridegroom not being forthcoming at the appointed time, the lady went in search of him, when, to her astonishment, he informed her he was in no particular hurry, and should not marry yet. On finding herself thus deceived, the tinfortunate girl ran away, and waded into a sheet of water waist high in her wedding dress, from which predicament, however, she was luckily extricated by two laboring men, taken back to where she had been staying, and eventually home. A few days afterwards the stonemason lover called at her residence, but was refused an interview by her brother. He then went to another of Nemo's relatives*— a lady of ■wealth and position, with whom he endeavoured to turn his heartlessness to pecuniary profits, offering to marry somebody else if a hundred pounds were given him, adding the interesting information that three other ladies were already in love ■with him. This extortionate demand was refused ; but the mercenary man was offered a handsome present if he became the husband of either of the three candidates he had mentioned. This, it seems, did not suit '• his book," and fortunately his cupidity effected that which nothing else could do — determined Nemo to throw him off altogether, the result beini; that he is now a presiding and unmarried genius in a common public-house. A short time after this occurrence the father of Nemo died, leaving her a very respectable income ; but in order to prevent her from forming a connection with anybody beneath her, the receipt of this income was made to be contingent on her remaining single, to revert to her only if she became a widow. Her brother having succeeded her father in his ecclesiastical office, Nemo resided alone at lodgings in Exeter up to the middle of last summer. One morning, however, she was seized •with a fit of infatuation, which surpassed even that which we have already narrated. While sitting at her open window she saw on the opposite side a man begging from door to door. She rang the bell for her servant, and ordered the man to be fetched. He was introduced into her room, served with refreshments, during, or after which, Nemo requested to hear his history. The beggar informed her that he was connected with a very high family in Ireland, from whom he ran away when he was fourteen years of age, and had not returned since. He travelled in foreign parts, and eventually enlisted in a foreign army, where he struck his superior officer, and was sentenced to be shot. That punishment however, was subsequently mitigated to hard labor for life in the mines. He underwent some years of his punishment, which was the cause of deformity on his right side, one shoulder becoming considerably lower than the other. After some years he succeeded in escaping from the mines, returned to England, enlisted as a soldier, but having deserted from his regiment, he was taken up, punished, and turned out, branded with the letter T> on the shoulder, which mark he showed our heroine. Since that he had been compelled to earn his livelihood as a beggar. This pathetic recital seems to have moved the susceptible heart of Nemo, for she forthwith interested herself for him with various contributors to the Strangers' Friendly Society, and rigged him out with linen and outer garments, brushes, combs, and other articles necessary for the proper performance of his toilette. This done, she visited him at a notoriously common lodging-house, in a back lane, but being disgusted with that habitation, she obtained lodgings for him at an eating-house, where, when he was duly installed, she visited him, exchange visits being made by the gentleman at the lady's lodgings. Not content with these marks of favour, she purchased for him a handsome ring, receiving one made of his Ijair in return, the latter, as well as the former, being of course paid for by Nemo.

Thus matters continued up to a short time ago, when, on heing remonstrated with on the impropriety of such a connection, she absented herself suddenly, without leaving the slightest notice of her whereabouts being entertained, until her return, when it transpired that she had gone off with the man to Devonport, nnd been married at a dissenting place of worship, the interesting office of bridesmaid having been performed by an old woman, a sextoness at one of the Exeter churches, whom Nemo had taken with her. Money by this time was getting short, and the pair returned to Exeter, the lady visiting her friends, and informing them of the high respectability of her husband's connections, and eventually so softening their anger that they agreed to give her money, and fit her out for Ireland, to which country she said her husband intended to take her. He was consequently admitted to several interviews with the family, and no end of dresses were provided for Nemo befitting her entrance into " polite Irish society." Sufficient money was given her to enable them to visit her relatives in London, while their boxes, in which was her portion of the family • plate, &c, were forwarded to Liverpool to await the pair when they reached that port en route for Ireland. They were received kindly by their London friends, whom they visited often during a week, when the newlymade husband took it into his head one evening to go down into the kitchen of a friend's house "to smoke a pipe," and not returning in what his wife considered reasonable time, she went in search of him, but searched in vain. With some misgiving, Nemo proceeded to their lodgings, when she found her boxes broken open, and that every article of value they contained had disappeared. Without delay she sought aid, and searched the metropolis for days — her efforts being* eventually crowned by finding her husband in a low pot-house, every penny he had taken from her having been squandered. Nemo induced her degraded spouse to go with her to the railway station, when, on making the names of her relatives known, she obtained a pass for both to Exeter, but on their arrival there they were entirely discarded by all their former friends. Having by some means obtained a little money, the couple proceeded to Plymouth, and only a few days since were located in anything but a first class house, in one of the Three Towns. An offer was sent the lady by her friends to receive her again, if she would leave the man who had treated her so badly ; but this, Nemo, with womanly heart and head, peremptorily declined. She will shortly become a mother, and she has expressed her determination to beg, or even starve, with the husband of her rash choice. It will occasion do surprise to the reader to learn that it has been found by a letter from Ireland, couched in a peculiar diction, that the man's high connections there are a myih. So ends for the present this remarkable and painful episode in the life of an accomplished Devonshire heiress. — "Western Morning News."