te with him a knowledge that Mr. Carroll,--for
the captain had, in truth, never been more than a lieutenant, and had
now long since sold out,--was impecunious, and a trouble rather than
otherwise. But I doubt whether there was a single inhabitant of the
neighborhood of Fulham who was aware that Mrs. Carroll and the Miss
Carrolls cost Mr. Grey on an average above six hundred a year.

There was one in Mr. Grey's family to whom he was so attached that he
would, to oblige her, have thrown over the whole Carroll family; but of
this that one person would not hear. She hated the whole Carroll family
with an almost unholy hatred, of which she herself was endeavoring to
repent daily, but in vain. She could not do other than hate them, but
she could do other than allow her father to withdraw his fostering
protection; for this one person was Mr. Grey's only daughter and his one
close domestic associate. Miss Dorothy Grey was known well to all the
neighborhood, and was both feared and revered. As we shall have much to
do with her in the telling of our story, it may be well to make her
stand plainly before the reader's eyes.

In the first place, it must be understood that she was motherless,
brotherless and sisterless. She had been Mr. Grey's only child, and her
mother had been dead for fifteen or sixteen years. She was now about
thirty years of age, but was generally regarded as ranging somewhere
between forty and fifty. "If she isn't nearer fifty than forty I'll eat
my old shoes," said a lady in the neighborhood to a gentleman. "I've
known her these twenty years, and she's not altered in the least." As
Dolly Grey had been only ten twenty years ago, the lady must have been
wrong. But it is singular how a person's memory of things may be created
out of their present appearances. Dorothy herself had apparently no
desire to set right this erroneous opinion which the neighborhood
entertained respecting her. She did not seem to care whether she was
supposed to be thirty, or forty, or fifty. Of youth, as a means of
getting lovers, she entertained a profound contempt. That no lover would
ever come she was assured, and would not at all have known what to do
with one had he come. The only man for whom she had ever felt the
slightest regard was her father. For some women about she did entertain
a passionless, well-regulated affection, but they were generally the
poor, the afflicted, or the aged. It was, however, always necessary that
the pe