tle, to run
small errands, and help in the garden; from which post, in process of
time, I rose to that of footman. Lady Catherine was in great odour
with the country gentry for her high-breeding, her fashionable
connections, and her almost boundless hospitality. She was popular
with the tenantry too, for there was not a better managed estate in
the west, and the factor had general orders against distress and
ejectment.

They said her ladyship had been reckoned a beauty in London
drawing-rooms, and our parish thought her wonderfully grand for the
gay dresses and rich jewellery she wore. Doubtless, these were but the
cast-offs of the season, for regularly every spring she and the family
went up to London, where they kept a fine house, and what is called
the best society. How much the gay dresses had to do with the beauty
is not for me to say, but Lady Catherine was a large, stately woman,
with a dark complexion, and very brilliant red, which the servants
whispered was laid on in old court fashion. Her manner to her equals
was graceful, and to her inferiors, gracious; but there was a look of
pride in her dark gray eyes, and a stern resolution about the
compressed lips, which struck my childish mind with strange fear, and
kept older hearts in awe. Her daughters, Florence and Agnes, were
pictures of their mother--proud, gay ladies, but thought the flower of
the county. Their portions were good, and they would have been
co-heiresses but for their brother Arthur. He was the youngest, but so
different from his mother and sisters, that you wouldn't have thought
him of the same family. His fair face and clear blue eyes, his curly
brown hair and merry look, had no likeness to them, though he was not
a whit behind them in air or stature. At eighteen, there was not a
finer lad in the shire; and he had a frank, kindly nature, which made
the tenantry rejoice in the prospect of his being their future
landlord.

Near the castle there stood a farmhouse, occupied by an old man whose
great-grandfather had cultivated the same fields. He was not rich, but
much respected by his neighbours for an honest, upright life. His wife
was as old as himself. They had been always easy-living people, and
had no child but one only daughter. Menie was a delicately pretty
girl, a little spoiled, perhaps, in her station, for both father and
mother made a queen of her at home. She was never allowed to do any
rough work, was always dressed, and her neighbou