And what was the fate of Mary King, the cause, however innocent, of all this tragedy?  For her own sake, and for obvious reasons, it was important that she should disappear for a time until the scandal had subsided; and with this object she was sent, under an assumed name, to join the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of her story.  Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment, she soon recovered her old health and gaiety.  She was young; and youth is quick to find healing and forgetfulness.  In the Welsh parsonage she made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of mind.

Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled many a long, winter evening.  On one such evening she told the story of her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious names to the characters.  And she told the story with such power and pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.

Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had produced, she exclaimed:  “I, myself, am the person for whom you express such sorrow.”  Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added:  “And now, I suppose, you will drive me from your home.”  But such was not to be Mary King’s fate.  The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest complete.  A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson’s wife, who had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.

CHAPTER XI

A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT

In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London.

From the day on which John Spencer fared from his country home to London in quest of gold, Fortune seems to have smiled sweetly and consistently on him.  All his capital was robust health and a determination to succeed; and so profitably did he turn it to account that within a few years of emerging from his ’prentice days he was a master of men, with a business of his own, and striding manfully towards his goal of wealth.  Everything he touched seemed to “turn to gold”; before he had reached middle-age he was known far beyond the city-walls as “Rich Spencer”; and by the time his Lord Mayoralty drew near he was able to instal himself in a splendour more befitting a Prince than a citizen, in Crosby Hall, which a century earlier Stow had described as “very large and beautiful, and the highest at that time in London.”