saw her. Good Heavens! the beauty of the creature--the childish
deviltry and fire!"

Each turned and looked into the eyes of the other with a question in
his thought, and each man's was the same, though one had lived beyond
sixty years and one but twenty-four. A female creature of such beauty,
of such temper, bred in such manner, among such companions, by such
parents--what fate could be before her? Roxholm averted his eyes.

"Tossed to the wolves," he said; "tossed to the pack--to harry and to
slaver over! God's mercy!"

As they rode he heard the story, Lord Twemlow having related such
incidents as he naturally knew to my Lord Dunstanwolde. 'Twas a bitter
history to Twemlow, whose kinsman the late Lady Wildairs had been, and
who was a discreetly sober and God-fearing gentleman, to whom irregular
habits and the reckless squandering of fortune were loathly things. And
this was the substance of the relation, which was so far out of the
common as to be almost monstrous: His disgust at the birth of this
ninth girl infant had so inflamed Sir Jeoffry that he had refused even
to behold it and had left it to its fate as if it had been an ill-made,
blind puppy. But two of her Ladyship's other children had survived
their infancy, and of these two their father knew nothing whatever but
that they had been called Barbara and Anne, that they showed no promise
of beauty, and lived their bare little lives in the Hall's otherwise
deserted west wing, having as their sole companion and instructress a
certain Mistress Margery Wimpole--a timorous poor relation, who had
taken the position in the wretched household to save herself from
starvation, and because she was fitted for no other; her education
being so poor and her understanding so limited, that no reputable or