Accordingly he took up his abode at a small inn in a retired Shropshire village, but even here his movements created suspicion, “some maintaining that he was connected with smugglers or gamesters, while all agreed that dishonesty or fraud was the cause of the mystery of the ‘London gentleman’s’ proceedings.”  Annoyed at the rude molestations to which he was daily, more or less, exposed, he quitted the inn and removed to a farm-house in the neighbourhood, where he remained for two years, in the course of which time he purchased some land, and commenced building himself a house: 

But the landlord of the cottage where he lived had a beautiful daughter of about seventeen years, to whom young Cecil became so deeply attached that, in spite of her humble birth, and simple education, he resolved to make her his wife, taking an early opportunity of informing her parents of his resolve.  The matter came as a surprise to the farmer and his wife, and all the more so because they had always regarded Mr. Cecil as far too grand a person to entertain such an idea.

“Marry our daughter?” exclaimed the good wife, in amazement.  “What, to a fine gentleman!  No, indeed!”

“Yes, marry her,” added the husband, “he shall marry her, for she likes him.  Has he not house and land, too, and plenty of money to keep her?”

So the rustic beauty was married, and it was not long afterwards that her husband found it necessary to repair to town on account of the Earl of Exeter’s death.  Setting out, as the young bride thought, on a pleasure trip, they stopped in the course of their journey at several noblemen’s seats, where, to her astonishment, Cecil was welcomed in the most friendly manner.  At last they reached Burleigh, in Northamptonshire—­the home of the Cecils.  And on driving up to the house, Cecil unconcernedly asked his wife, “whether she would like to be at home there?”

“Oh, yes,” she excitedly exclaimed; “it is, indeed, a lovely spot, exceeding all I have seen, and making me almost envy its possessor.”

“Then,” said the young earl, “it is yours.”

The whole affair seemed like a fairy tale to the bewildered girl, and who, but herself, could describe the feelings she experienced at the acclamations of joy and welcome which awaited her in her magnificent home.  But it was no dream, and as soon as the young earl had arranged his affairs, he returned to Shropshire, threw off his disguise, and revealed his rank to his wife’s parents, assigning to them the house he had built, with a settlement of L700 per annum.

“But,” writes Sir Bernard Burke, “if report speak truly, the narrative must have a melancholy end.  Her ladyship, unaccustomed to the exalted sphere in which she moved, chilled by its formalities, and depressed in her own esteem, survived only a few years her extraordinary elevation, and sank into an early grave,” although Moore has given a brighter picture of this sad close to a pretty romance.