le above her shoe-tops, but she lowered the skirt
on her own account, very shortly.

Country girls of immature age, comely to look upon, had better keep
close at home. The city devours such, and infamy and death for them lie
in wait. But here was an exception--Emma Lyon was a child of the
hedgerows, and her innocence was only in her appearance. She must have
been at that time like the child of the gypsy beggar told of by
Smollett, that was purchased for two pounds by an admiring gent, who
made a bet with his friends that he could replace her rags with silks
and fine linen, and in six weeks introduce her at court, as to the
manner born, a credit to her sex. All worked well for a time, when one
day, alas, under great provocation, the girl sloughed her ladylike
manners, and took on the glossary of the road and camp.

Emma Lyon at fifteen, having graduated as a scullion, went to work for a
shopkeeper, as a servant and general helper. It was soon found that as a
saleswoman she was worth much more than as a cook. A caller asked her
where she was educated, and she explained that it was at the expense of
the Earl of Halifax, and that she was his ward.

The Earl fortunately was dead and could not deny the report. Sir Harry
Featherston, hearing about the titled girl, or at least of the girl
mentioned with titled people, rescued her from the shopkeeper and sent
her to his country seat, that she might have the advantages of the best
society.

Her beauty and quiet good sense seemed to back up the legend that she
was the natural child of the Earl of Halifax; and as the subject seemed
to be a painful one to the child herself, it was discussed only in
whispers. The girl learned to ride horseback remarkably well, and at a
fete appeared as Joan of Arc, armed cap-a-pie, riding a snow-white
stallion. Romney, the portrait-painter, spending a week-end with Sir
Henry, was struck with the picturesque beauty of the child and painted
her as Diana. Romney was impressed with the plastic beauty of the girl,
her downcast eyes, her silent ways, her responsive manner, and he begged
Sir Harry to allow her to go to London and sit for another picture.

Now Sir Harry was a married man, senior warden of his church, and as the
girl was bringing him a trifle more fame than he deserved, he consented.

Romney writing to a friend, under date of June Nineteenth, Seventeen
Hundred Eighty-one, says:

"At present, and the greater part of the summer, I shall