CHAPTER X
THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER
When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a "quiverful" of offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate could sully her.
Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to the Earldom of Kingston, and member of a family which had held its head high, and preserved an untarnished 'scutcheon since its founder, Sir John King, won Queen Elizabeth's favour by his zeal in suppressing the Irish rebellion. All its men had been honourable, all its women pure; and it was not until Mary King came on the scene that this fair repute was ever in danger.
Not that there was anything vicious in Lord Kingsborough's young daughter. She was the victim of a weak nature and a lover as unscrupulous as he was handsome and clever. She grew up in the Mitchelstown nursery—one of a dozen brothers and sisters—a wholesome, merry, mischievous girl, with no great pretensions to beauty, but with the fresh charms, the dancing grey eyes, and brown hair (which, in its luxuriant abundance, was her chief glory) of a daughter of Ireland.
Among those whom her bright nature and winsome ways captivated was one Henry Gerald Fitzgerald, the natural son of her mother's brother, and thus her cousin by blood, if not by law. Fitzgerald, who was many years Mary's senior—indeed, at the time this story really opens, he was a married man—had been brought up by Lady Kingsborough as one of her children. He had been the companion of Mary's elder brothers, and Mary's "big playfellow" when she was still nursing her dolls. He was, moreover, a young man of remarkable physical gifts—tall, of splendid figure, and strikingly handsome. It is thus small wonder that the child made a hero of him long before she had emerged from short frocks. When she grew into young womanhood Fitzgerald's attentions to her grew still more marked. He was her constant companion on walks and rides, her partner at dances—in fact, her shadow everywhere, until even her unsuspecting parents began to grow alarmed.
One summer day in 1797, when the Kingsborough family were spending a few weeks by the Thames-side, near Fitzgerald's home at Bishopsgate, the blow fell. Miss King disappeared, leaving behind her a note to the effect that she intended to drown herself in the Thames. Her family and friends were distracted. The river was dragged, but no trace of the missing girl was found. On the river bank, however, were discovered her bonnet and shawl, mute witnesses to the fate that seemed to have overtaken her. Her father alone refused to believe that his daughter had ended her life tragically. He persisted in his search for her, and was soon rewarded by a clue which threw a different and more ominous light on her fate.
From a postboy he learned that a young lady, answering exactly to the description of his daughter, had been driven, in the company of a handsome man, to London, where they had walked off arm in arm together. In London they had vanished; and advertisements and placards offering large rewards failed to discover a trace of them. Then it was that Lord Kingsborough's suspicions fixed themselves firmly on Fitzgerald. He and no other must have been the scoundrel who had done this dastardly deed—a shameful return for all the kindness lavished on him by the family of the girl he had abducted.
When his lordship sought Fitzgerald out, and charged him with his infamy, he was met with open surprise and honest indignation. So far from being the guilty man, Fitzgerald avowed the utmost disgust at the deed, and declared that he would know no rest until the girl had been restored to her parents, and the miscreant properly punished. And from this time no one appeared to be more zealous in the search for the runaway than her abductor.
For weeks all their efforts to trace the fugitive proved of no avail, until one day a girl of the lower-classes called on Lady Kingsborough, to whom she told the following strange tale. She was, she said, servant at a boarding-house in Kennington, to which, some weeks earlier (in fact, at the very time of the disappearance), a gentleman had brought a young lady who answered to the advertised description of the missing girl, especially in her profusion of beautiful hair, which fell below the knees. The gentleman, she continued, often visited the girl.