the family feud with the Frasers.

I was a very lonely child, with no playmates or companions of any
sort, and my girlhood was lonelier still. The only passion in my life
was my love for my father. I would have done and suffered anything to
win his affection in return. But all I ever did win was an amused
tolerance--and I was grateful for that--almost content. It was much to
have something to love and be permitted to love it.

If I had been a beautiful and spirited girl I think Father might have
loved me, but I was neither. At first I did not think or care about my
lack of beauty; then one day I was alone in the beech wood; I was
trying to disentangle my skirt which had caught on some thorny
underbrush. A young man came around the curve of the path and, seeing
my predicament, bent with murmured apology to help me. He had to kneel
to do it, and I saw a ray of sunshine falling through the beeches
above us strike like a lance of light athwart the thick brown hair
that pushed out from under his cap. Before I thought I put out my hand
and touched it softly, then I blushed crimson with shame over what I
had done. But he did not know--he never knew.

When he had released my dress he rose and our eyes met for a moment as
I timidly thanked him. I saw that he was good to look upon--tall and
straight, with broad, stalwart shoulders and a dark, clean-cut face.
He had a firm, sensitive mouth and kindly, pleasant, dark blue eyes. I
never quite forgot the look in those eyes. It made my heart beat
strangely, but it was only for a moment, and the next he had lifted
his cap and passed on.

As I went homeward I wondered who he might be. He must be a stranger,
I thought--probably a visitor in some of our few neighbouring
families. I wondered too if I should meet him again, and found the
thought very pleasant.

I knew few men and they were all old, like Father, or at least
elderly. They were the only people who ever came to our house, and
they either teased me or overlooked me. None of them was at all like
this young man I had met in the beech wood, nor ever could have been,
I thought.

When I reached home I stopped before the big mirror that hung in the
hall and did what I had never done before in my life--looked at myself
very scrutinizingly and wondered if I had any beauty. I could only
sorrowfully conclude that I had not--I was so slight and pale, and the
thick black hair and dark eyes that might have been pretty in another
woma