From that time till August, 1750, the shadow of his sinister guest did not darken the attorney’s door.  On the first of that month Cranstoun wrote that he proposed to wait upon him.  “He must come, I suppose,” sighed the old man, and allowed Mary to write that the visitor would be received.  Doubtless, he faintly hoped that the Scottish difficulty was at last removed.  But the captain, when he came, brought nothing better than the old empty assurances, and his host did not conceal how little weight he now attached to such professions.  The visit was an unpleasant one for all parties, and the situation was rapidly becoming impossible.  Mary “seldom rose from the table without tears.”  Her father spent his evenings at “the coffee-house,” that he might see as little as possible of the unwelcome guest.

One morning, Mary states, Cranstoun put some of the magic powder in the old gentleman’s tea, when, mirabile dictu, Mr. Blandy, who at breakfast had been very cross, appeared at dinner in the best of humours, and continued so “all the time Mr. Cranstoun stayed with him”!  After this, who could doubt the beneficent efficacy of the wise woman’s drug?

During one of their daily walks this singular lover informed his betrothed that he had a secret to communicate, to wit, that over and above the Scottish complication, “he had a daughter by one Miss Capel” a year before he met the present object of his desires.  Miss Blandy, with much philosophy, replied that she hoped he now saw his follies and would not repeat them.  “If I do,” said Cranstoun, “I must be a villain; you alone can make me happy in this world; and by following your example, I hope I shall be happy in the next.”  A day or two afterwards, when Cranstoun was abroad, Mary, so far anticipating her wifely duties, entered his room in order to look out his things for the wash.  She found more “dirty linen” than she expected.  In an unlocked trunk was a letter of recent date, addressed to the gallant captain by a lady then enjoying his protection in town.  Even Miss Blandy’s robust affection was not, for the moment, able to overlook a treachery so base.  She locked the trunk, put the key in her pocket, and at the first opportunity handed it to Cranstoun, with the remark that he should in future be more careful of his private correspondence.  A disgusting scene ensued.  For two hours the wretched little captain wept and raved, imploring her forgiveness.  On his knees, clinging to the skirts of her gown, he swore he would not live till night unless she pardoned his offence.  Mary asked him to leave Henley at once; she would not expose him, and their engagement “might seem to go off by degrees.”  But the miserable creature conjured her by her mother’s dying words not to give him up, vowing never to repeat “the same provocations.”  In the end Mary foolishly yielded; one wonders at the strength of that abnormal passion by which she was driven to accept a position so impossible for a decent and intelligent girl.