careful family would have accepted her as governess or companion. Her
two poor little charges learned the few things she could teach them,
and their meek spiritedness gave her but little trouble. Their dead
mother's suffering and their father's rough contempt on the rare
occasions when he had chanced to behold them had chastened them to
humbleness from their babyhood. There was none who wanted them, none
who served or noticed them, and there was no circumstance which could
not restrain them, no person who was not their ruler if 'twas his will.

"But the ninth one was not like them," said my Lord. "The blood of the
fierce devils who were the chiefs of her house centuries ago woke in
her veins at her birth. 'Tis strange indeed, Gerald, how such things
break forth--or slumber--in a race. Should you trace Wildairs, as you
trace Mertoun through the past, her nature would be made clear enough.
They have been splendid devils, some of them--devils who fought,
shrieking with ferocious laughter in the face of certain horrible
death; devils whose spirit no torture of rack or flame could conquer;
beings who could endure in silence horrors almost supernatural; who
could bear more, revel more, suffer more, defy more than any other
human thing."

"And this child is one of them!" said Roxholm.

He said but little as they rode onward and he listened. There was
within him a certain distaste for what seemed to him the unnatural
tumult of his feelings. A girl child of twelve rollicking in boys'
clothes was not a pleasing picture, but in one sense a tragic one, and
certainly not such as should set a man's heart beating and his cheek to
flame when he heard stories of her fantastic life and character. On
this occasion he did not understand himself; if he had been a