talent,
and learning, and virtue, and nobleness, that I revere, and could
worship!"

"But, beloved," I urged, "people may be very kind and good, without
being so mighty clever."

"The Erminstouns female are not kind, are not good," she haughtily
replied: "the Erminstouns male are fools! Ruth, I have changed one
bondage for another, and the sins of the father fall on the innocent
child. I have changed starvation, and cold, and degradation, for hateful
dependence on the vulgar and despised. Woe is me, woe is me! If I can
but save you, my sister, and make you independent, I can bear my lot."

My education commenced, and they called me a "wise child:" every one was
kind to the poor cripple, even the "proud Miss Erminstouns," who cast
envious and disdainful glances on my beautiful sister, which she repaid
with unutterable scorn--silent, but sure. Oh, how I prayed Gabrielle to
_try_ and win their love; to read her Bible, and therein find that "a
kind word turneth away wrath;" but Gabrielle was proud as Lucifer, and
liked not to read of humility and forbearance. I found a zealous friend
and instructor in Mr. Dacre, the "poor, pious curate;" he was a college
friend of my brother-in-law, and a few years his senior. I felt assured
that Mr. Dacre thought Mr. Thomas's life a very precarious one, from the
way in which he spoke to him on religious subjects, and the anxiety he
evinced as to his spiritual welfare. Mr. Dacre used also to call me his
"wise little friend;" and we were wont to speak of passages in the book
I loved best. What thought I of him? Why, sometimes in my own mind I
would compare him to an apostle--St. Paul, for instance, sincere,
learned, and inspired; but then St. Paul haunted my day-dreams as a
reverend gentleman with a beard and flowing robes, while Mr. Dacre was
young, handsome, and excessively neat in his ecclesiastical costume and
appointments generally. Mr. Dacre had serious dark eyes--solemn eyes
they were, in my estimation, but the very sweetest smile in the world;
and one of the Misses Erminstoun seemed to think so too: but people said
that the pious young minister was vowed to celibacy.

There was also another frequent visitor at Erminstoun Hall, who not
seldom found his way to Wood End Cottage; and this was no less a
personage than Lord Treherne, who resided at Treherne Abbey in princely
magnificence, and had lately become a widower. This nobleman was upward
of sixty, stately, cold, and reserved in