Miss Blandy broke the sad news by letter to her lover in London, and pressed him to come immediately to Henley; but the gallant officer replied that he was confined to the house for fear of the bailiffs, and suggested the propriety of a remittance from the mistress of his heart.  Mary promptly borrowed forty pounds from Mrs. Mounteney, fifteen of which she forwarded for the enlargement of the captain, who, on regaining his freedom, came to Henley, where he remained some weeks.  Francis Blandy was much affected by the loss of his wife.  At first he seems to have raised no objection to Cranstoun’s visit, but soon Mary had to complain of the “unkind things” which her father said both to her lover and herself.  There was still no word from Scotland, except a “very civil” letter of condolence from my Lady Cranstoun, accompanied by a present of kippered salmon—­apparently intended as an antidote to grief; but though the old man was gratified by such polite attentions, his mind was far from easy.  He was fast losing all faith in the vision of that splendid alliance by which he had been so long deluded, and did not care to conceal his disappointment from the person mainly responsible.

On this visit mention was first made by Cranstoun of the fatal powder of which we shall hear so much.  Miss Blandy states that, apropos to her father’s unpropitious attitude, her lover “acquainted her of the great skill of the famous Mrs. Morgan,” a cunning woman known to him in Scotland, from whom he had received a certain powder, “which she called love-powders”—­being, as appears, the Scottish equivalent to the poculum amatorium or love philtre of the Romans.  Mary said she had no faith in such things, but Cranstoun assured her of its efficacy, having once taken some himself, and immediately forgiven a friend to whom he had intended never to speak again.  “If I had any of these powders,” said he, “I would put them into something Mr. Blandy should drink.”  Such is Mary’s account of the inception of the design upon her father’s love—­or life.  There for the time matters rested.

“Before he left Henley for the last time,” writes Lady Russell, to whose interesting account we shall later refer, “Captain Cranstoun made an assignation with Miss Blandy to meet her in the grounds of Park Place, which had long been their trysting-place; and here it was that in a walk which still goes by the name of ‘Blandy’s Walk,’ he first broached his diabolical plan.”  Park Place, according to the same authority, had shortly before been purchased by General Conway and Lady Ailesbury from Mr. Blandy, as “trustee” of the property.

A “dunning” letter following the impecunious captain to his peaceful retreat alarmed the lovers, for the appearance of a bailiff in the respectable house in Hart Street would, for Mr. Blandy, have been, as the phrase goes, the last straw.  Fortunately, Mary had retained against such a contingency the balance of Mrs. Mounteney’s loan; and with another fifteen pounds of that lady’s in his pocket, the captain left for London to liquidate his debt.