sanctimonious youngster he would have reproved his own seeming levity,
but he was not so, and frankly felt himself restless and ill at ease.

The name given to her had been Clorinda, and from her babyhood she had
been as tempestuous as her sisters were mild. None could manage her.
Her baby training left wholly to neglected and loose-living servants,
she had spent her first years in kitchens, garrets, and stables. The
stables and the stable-boys, the kennels and their keepers, were loved
better than aught else. She learned to lisp the language of grooms' and
helpers, she cursed and swore as they did, she heard their songs and
stories, and was as familiar with profanity and obscene language as
other children are with nursery rhymes. Until she was five years old
Sir Jeoffry never set eyes upon her. Then a strange chance threw her in
his way and sealed her fate.

Straying through the house, having escaped from her woman, the child
had reached the big hall, and sate upon the floor playing with a
powder-flask she had found. 'Twas Sir Jeoffry's, and he, coming upon
her, not knowing her for his own offspring (not that such a knowledge
would have calmed his passion), he sprang upon her with curses and
soundly trounced her. Either of her sisters Anne or Barbara would have
been convulsed with terror, but this one was only roused to a fury as
much greater for her size than Sir Jeoffry was bigger than herself. She
flew at him and poured forth oaths, she shrieked at him and beat his
legs with his own crop, which she caught up from the floor where it lay
within reach, she tore at him with tooth and nail, and with such
strength and infant fearlessness as arrested him in his frenzy and
caused him to burst forth laughing as if he had gone mad.

"From that hour she was a doomed creature," my Lord ended. "What else