and all the lands going to his sister's son,
Marmaduke, or as he was usually called Duke,
Brownlow. Duke's parents were dead, and his
uncle was his guardian, and his guardian's house
was his home. The lad was some seven or eight
years older than his cousin; and probably Sir
Mark thought it not unlikely that his daughter
and his heir might make a match. Theresa's
mother had had some foreign blood in her, and
had been brought up in France—not so far away
but that its shores might be seen by any one
who chose to take an easy day's ride from
Crowley Castle for the purpose.

Lady Crowley had been a delicate elegant
creature, but no great beauty, judging from all
accounts; Sir Mark's family were famous for their
good looks; Theresa, an unusually lucky child,
inherited the outward graces of both her parents.
A portrait which I saw of her, degraded to a
station over the parlour chimney-piece in the
village inn, showed me black hair, soft yet arch
grey eyes with brows and lashes of the same tint
as her hair, a full pretty pouting passionate mouth,
and a round slender throat. She was a wilful
little creature, and her father's indulgence made
her more wayward. She had a nurse, too, a
French bonne, whose mother had been about
my lady from her youth, who had followed my
lady to England, and who had died there.
Victorine had been in attendance on the young
Theresa from her earliest infancy, and almost
took the place of a parent in power and affection
—in power, as to ordering and arranging
almost what she liked, concerning the child's
management—in love, because they speak to
this day of the black year when virulent small-
pox was rife in Crowley, and when, Sir Mark
being far away on some diplomatic mission—in
Vienna, I fancy—Victorine shut herself up with
Miss Theresa when the child was taken ill with
the disease, and nursed her night and day. She
only succumbed to the dreadful illness when all
danger to the child was over. Theresa came
out of it with unblemished beauty; Victorine
barely escaped with life, and was disfigured for
life.

This disfigurement put a stop to much
unfounded scandal which had been afloat respecting
the French servant's great influence over
Sir Mark. He was, in fact, an easy and indolent
man, rarely excited to any vehemence of
emotion, and who felt it to be a point of honour
to carry out his dead wife's wish that Victorine
should never leave Theresa, and that the
management of the child should be confided to her.
Only once had there been a struggle for power
between Sir Mark and the bonne, and then she
had won the victory. And no wonder, if the
old butler's account were true; for he had gone
into the room unawares, and had found Sir Mark
and Victorine at high words; and he said that
Victorine was white with rage, that her eyes
were blazing with passionate lire, that her voice
was low, and her words were few, but that,
although she spoke in French, and he the butler
only knew his native English, he would rather
have been sworn at by a drunken grenadier
with a sword in his hand, than have had those
words of Victorine's addressed to him.

Even the choice of Theresa's masters was left
to Victorine. A little reference was occasionally
made to Madam Hawtrey, the parson's wife and
a distant relation of Sir Mark's, but, seeing that,
if Victorine chose so to order it, Madam
Hawtrey's own little daughter Bessy would have been
deprived of the advantages resulting from
gratuitous companionship in all Theresa's lessons,
she was careful how she opposed or made
an enemy of Mademoiselle Victorine. Bessy
was a gentle quiet child, and grew up to be a
sensible sweet-tempered girl, with a very fair share
of English beauty; fresh-complexion, brown-eyed
round-faced, with a stiff though well-made figure,
as different as possible from Theresa's slight
lithe graceful form. Duke was a young man to
these two maidens, while they to him were little
more than children. Of course he admired his
cousin Theresa the most—who would not?—
but he was establishing his first principles of
morality for himself, and her conduct towards
Bessy sometimes jarred against his ideas of
right. One day, after she had been tyrannising
over the self-contained and patient Bessy so as
to make the latter cry—and both the amount of
the tyranny and the crying were unusual
circumstances, for Theresa was of a generous nature
when not put out of the way—Duke spoke to
his cousin:

"Theresa! You had no right to blame Bessy
as you did. It was as much your fault as hers.
You were as much bound to remember Mr.
Dawson's directions about the sums you were
to do for him, as she was,"

The girl opened her great grey eyes in
surprise. She to blame!

"What does Bessy come to the castle for, I
wonder? They pay nothing—we pay all. The
least she can do, is to remember for me what we
are told. I shan't trouble myself with attending
to Mr. Dawson's directions; and if Bessy does
not like to do so, she can stay away. She
already knows enough to earn her bread as a
maid: which I suppose is what she'll have to
come to."

The moment Theresa had said this, she could
have bitten her tongue out for the meanness and
rancour of the speech. She saw pain and
disappointment clearly expressed on Duke's face;
and, in another moment, her impulses would have
carried her to the opposite extreme, and she
would have spoken out her self-reproach. But
Duke thought it his duty to remonstrate with
her, and to read her a homily, which, however
true and just, weakened the effect of the look of
distress on his face. Her wits were called into
play to refute his arguments; her head rather
than her heart took the prominent part in the
controversy; and it ended unsatisfactorily to
both; he, going away with dismal though
unspoken prognostics touching what she would
become as a woman if she were so supercilious
and unfeeling as a girl; she, the moment his
back was turned, throwing herself on the floor
and sobbing as if her heart would break.