“‘Then,’ said he, ‘we must go and fetch it.’  They were soon again at the house, the ladder was again placed, the lady remounted, while the ill-natured lover waited below.  But she delayed to come, and so he gently called, ‘Are you coming?’ when she looked out of the window and said, ‘Perhaps I may, and perhaps not,’ then shut down the window, and left him to return upon the double horse alone.”

But, if traditionary lore is to be believed, the sudden disappearance of the bride on her wedding day has had, in more than one instance, a very romantic and tragic origin.  There is the well-known story which tells how Lord Lovel married a young lady, a baron’s daughter, who, on the wedding night, proposed that the guests should play at “hide-and-seek.”  Accordingly, the bride hid herself in an old oak chest, but the lid falling down, shut her in, for it went with a spring lock.  Lord Lovel and the rest of the company sought her that night and many days in succession, but nowhere could she be found.  Her strange disappearance for many years remained an unsolved mystery, but some time afterwards the fatal chest was sold, which, on being opened, was found to contain the skeleton of the long-lost bride.  This popular story was made the subject of a song, entitled “The Mistletoe Bough,” by Thomas Haynes Bayley, who died in 1839; and Marwell Old Hall, near Winchester, once the residence of the Seymours, and afterwards of the Dacre family, has a similar tradition attached to it.  Indeed, the very chest has been preserved in the hall of Upham Rectory, having been removed from Marwell some forty years ago.  The great house at Malsanger, near Basingstoke, has a story of a like nature connected with it, reminding us of that of Tony Forster in Kenilworth, and of Rogers’s Ginevra: 

    “There then had she found a grave! 
    Within that chest had she concealed herself,
    Fluttering with joy, the happiest of the happy,
    When a spring lock that lay in ambush there,
    Fastened her down for ever.”

This story is found in many places, and the chest in which the poor bride was found is shown at Bramshill, in Hampshire, the residence of Sir John Cope.  But only too frequently the young lady disappears from some preconcerted arrangement; a striking instance being that of Agnes, daughter of James Ferguson, the mechanist.  While walking down the Strand with her father, she slipt her hand out of his whilst he was absorbed in thought, and he never saw her from that day, nor was anything known of the girl’s fate till many years after Ferguson’s death.  At the time, the story of her extraordinary disappearance was matter of public comment, and all kinds of extravagant theories were started to account for it.  The young lady, however, was gone, and despite the most patient search, and the most persistent inquiries, no tidings could be gained as to her whereabouts.  In course of years the mystery was cleared up, and revealed a pitiable case of sin and shame.  It