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The story proceeds to say that although Lady Primrose had proved her willingness to believe in the magical delineations of the mirror by writing down an account of them, yet she was so much surprised by discovering them to be the representation of actual fact that she almost fainted. Something, however, yet remained to be ascertained. Did Lord Primrose’s attempted marriage take place exactly at the same time with her visit to the conjurer? She asked her brother on what day the circumstance which he related took place. Having been informed, she took out her key, and requested him to go to her chamber, to open a drawer which she described, and to bring her a sealed packet which he would find in that drawer. On the packet being opened, it was discovered that Lady Primrose had seen the shadowy representation of her husband’s abortive nuptials on the very evening when they were transacted in reality.[49]

Lord Primrose died in 1706, leaving a widow who could scarcely be expected to mourn for him. She was still a young and beautiful woman, and might have procured her choice among twenty better matches. Such, however, was the idea she had formed of the marriage state from her first husband that she made a resolution never again to become a wife. She kept her resolution for many years, and probably would have done so till the last but for a singular circumstance. The celebrated Earl of Stair, who resided in Edinburgh during the greater part of twenty years, which he spent in retirement from all official employments, became deeply smitten with her ladyship, and earnestly sued for her hand. If she could have relented in favour of any man, it would have been for one who had acquired so much public honour, and whose private character was also, in general respects, so estimable. But to him also she declared her resolution of remaining unmarried. In his desperation, he resolved upon an expedient which strongly marks the character of the age in respect of delicacy. By dint of bribes to her domestics, he got himself insinuated overnight into a small room in her ladyship’s house, where she used to say her prayers every morning, and the window of which looked out upon the principal street of the city. At this window, when the morning was a little advanced, he showed himself, en déshabillé, to the people passing along the street; an exhibition which threatened to have such an effect upon her ladyship’s reputation that she saw fit to accept of him for a husband.[50]