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 Earl of Gifford, a man 14 years younger than she was, who had first made her acquaintance when he was with a tutor, studying for Cambridge. He was depressed and morbid, and Lady Dufferin, with her wonderfully sympathetic nature, understood and cheered him. And so an affection began which, on his part, knew no change, and lasted for twenty long years.

He asked her to marry him, but she refused, and she might have persisted in her refusal if it had not been for an unfortunate accident. In the effort of preventing the bole of a tree from crushing some workmen who were removing it, Lord Gifford sustained such serious injuries that he never recovered. Lord Dufferin had now married, and when the party returned from Ireland, they found Lord Gifford hopelessly ill. He was removed to their house at Highgate, and now, at last, Lady Dufferin consented to marry her faithful lover at his earnest request. The marriage ceremony was solemnised in Lord Gifford's bedroom, on the 13th Oct., 1862, and two months afterwards he passed away in his 41st year, holding, as Lord Dufferin says, " the hand of her, to whom he had clung for sympathy, support, and comfort from boyhood."

Writing of this marriage. Lady Dufferin said, "It gives me the right to devote every day and hour that God spares him to his comfort and relief, and the right to mourn him openly, whose loss I