husband. She had neither the strength of limb nor the agile grace of
the mountaineer. This was partly the result of the conditions under
which her girlhood had been spent. She was the only child of a
dalesman, who had so far accumulated estate in land as to be known in
the vernacular as a statesman. Her mother had died at her birth, and
before she had attained to young womanhood her father, who had married
late in life, was feeble and unfit for labor. His hand was too
nervous, his eye too uncertain, his breath too short for the constant
risks of mountaineering; so he put away all further thought of adding
store to store, and settled himself peaceably in his cottage under
Castenand, content with the occasional pleasures afforded by his
fiddle, an instrument upon which he had from his youth upward shown
some skill. In this quiet life his daughter was his sole companion.

There was no sight in Wythburn more touching than to see this girl
solacing her father's declining years, meeting his wishes with
anticipatory devices, pampering him in his whims, soothing him in the
imaginary sorrows sometimes incident to age, even indulging him with a
sort of pathetic humor in his frequent hallucinations. To do this she
had to put by a good many felicities dear to her age and condition,
but there was no apparent consciousness of self-sacrifice. She had
many lovers, for in these early years she was beautiful; and she had
yet more suitors, for she was accounted rich. But neither flattery nor
the fervor of genuine passion seemed to touch her, and those who
sought her under the transparent guise of seeking her father usually
went away as they came. She had a smile and the cheeriest word of
welcome for all alike, and so the young dalesmen who wooed her from
the ignoble motive came to think her a little of a coquette, while
those who wooed her from the purer impulse despaired of ruffling with
the gentlest gales of love the still atmosphere of her heart.