ROMANTIC STORY OF A LIVERPOOL WOMAN.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 59, 14 August 1862, Page 6 (Supplement)

ROMANTIC STORY OF A LIVERPOOL WOMAN.

Some three years ago there came to reside near Brixton, London, two sisters, of the respective ages of 21 and 19. They were both pretty, and they had a quiet, lady-like grace of demeanour which rendered them very attractive. They were moreover, highly accomplished, and had every requisite personal qualification to shine in society. There was a mystery, too, about them which, to people of romantic imaginations, only served to heighten the interest with which they were generally regarded. Nobody knew who the ladies were or what were their “antecedents.” As for “ relatives,” they did not appear to have any, their establishment consisting simply of three female servants. They appeared, however, to be in a(11 uent circumstances, and their villa was furnished in a style o 1 singular elegance. There was nothing ilashy or ostentatious about it, but everything was in the best possible taste. Notwithstanding the inscrutability of their origin, the ladies gained admission into excellent society ; their beauty, the grace of their manners, and the strict propriety of their conduct winning golden opinions for them wherever they went. That ladies so young and so fair should live by themselves without the protection of any male relative was, doubtless, a problem difficult of solution, one which at first afforded matter of curious speculation to persons of an inquisitive turn of mind ; but the nut was not to be cracked, and people at last gave up in dispair the attempt to understand what appeared to be quite incomprehensible. Whether they had fallen from the clouds or emergetl from the sea, they the ladies, were gifted, beautiful, rich, and so strictly respectable as to defy slander. They were accordingly received on on terms of perfect equality by some of the best families in the neighbourhood, including those of the sitting members. To their most intimate friends they had been known to confess that they were themselves very much in the dark respecting their own parentage. Ail they knew for certain on the subject was that they had a mother who, they believed, kept an hotel in Liverpool, but who having a horror of p.llowing them to reside in such a place, had established them in a villa near London, where she was in the habit of visiting them two or three times in the course of a year, jdu reste, they had been educated on the continent. Thus circumstanced, they had led a very pleasant life—and blameless as pleasant—until about a week ago, when one evening, just as they were about to sit down to dinner, they were equally surprised and delighted by a visit from, their mother, who had come up from Liverpool on important and unexpected business. The old ladv scemcd troubled in spirit, and complained of being harrassed about “one thing and another;” but her daughters attributed her sense of discomfort simply to the fatigue ami excitement of a long journey. The night woi-e on, as nights will wear, and the family had already retired to rest, when a knock was heard at the door. Female heads were thrust from the windows, and there was much expostulation with the untimely visitor, who was entreated to explain the purpose of his visit, or, at all events, to defer his call until the morrow. The stranger was inexorable. Ilis business, ho said, was not with the young ladies, but with the old, and her he was determined to see, come what might of it. So ho thundered away at the knocker with all his might and main. Ilis was a strong arm and muscular; and as the law nerved its muscles, he cared not what row he might occasion in the most peaceable of neighbourhoods at the most unseasonable of hours. At length the bolts are drawn, the door is opened, and the stranger “stands confessed”—not“a maid in all her charms,” but an officer of the Liverpool police, in all his terrors, lie has come for the old lady, Mrs. Gallagher, the most infamous procuress in England. It is said there is scarcelya town of any importance in the kingdon in which she has not established one or more of her detestable houses. The two young ladies have, as you may suppose, fled from Brixton. The revelation of their mother’s infamy is said to have come upon them like a thunderbolt; but whither they have gone or what has become of them is not generally known. Their furniture is to bo sold by auction in a few days, and meantime their beautiful villa is thrown open for the inspection of the public. Strangers walk through the elegantly-appointed rooms, and expatiate curiously on the character and conduct of their former occupants. Everything in the house betokens a refined taste and elegant sympathies. There are books and pictures, birds and flowers, and all the means and appliances of luxury—costly furniture, a piano by Collard, a harp by Erard, and the walls of the drawing-room are covered with cray-

ons and water-colour drawings executed by the sisters. The mother, who, at all events, appears to have some “remnant of the angel left,” inasmuch as she preserved her children from infamy in which she herself was steeped, was tried at the last Liverpool sessions, and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment. —Belfast News-Letter.