rth, and
beauty, and fortune, she should still, as it were in the morning of
her life, have withdrawn to this secluded mansion, in a county where
she was personally unknown, distant from the metropolis, estranged
from all her own relatives and connexions, and without resource of
even a single neighbour, for the only place of importance in her
vicinity was uninhabited. The general impression of the villagers was
that Lady Annabel was a widow; and yet there were some speculators
who would shrewdly remark, that her ladyship had never worn weeds,
although her husband could not have been long dead when she first
arrived at Cherbury. On the whole, however, these good people were not
very inquisitive; and it was fortunate for them, for there was little
chance and slight means of gratifying their curiosity. The whole of
the establishment had been formed at Cherbury, with the exception of
her ladyship's waiting-woman, Mistress Pauncefort, and she was by far
too great a personage to condescend to reply to any question which was
not made to her by Lady Annabel herself.

The beauty of the young Venetia was not the hereditary gift of her
beautiful mother. It was not from Lady Annabel that Venetia Herbert
had derived those seraphic locks that fell over her shoulders and
down her neck in golden streams, nor that clear grey eye even, whose
childish glance might perplex the gaze of manhood, nor that little
aquiline nose, that gave a haughty expression to a countenance that
had never yet dreamed of pride, nor that radiant complexion, that
dazzled with its brilliancy, like some winged minister of Raffael or
Correggio. The peasants that passed the lady and her daughter in their
walks, and who blessed her as they passed, for all her grace and
goodness, often marvelled why so fair a mother and so fair a child
should be so dissimilar, that one indeed might be compared to a starry
night, and the other to a sunny day.

CHAPTER II.

It was a bright and soft spring morning: the dewy vistas of Cherbury
sparkled in the sun, the cooing of the pigeons sounded around, the
peacocks strutted about the terrace and spread their tails with
infinite enjoyment and conscious pride, and Lady Annabel came forth
with her little daughter, to breathe the renovating odours of the
season. The air was scented with the violet, tufts of daffodils were
scattered all about, and though the snowdrop had vanished, and the
primroses were fast disappearing, their