ut it was simply not in him to
understand how she loved and craved for music. She was a cloudy little
creature, up and down in mood--rather like a brown lady spaniel that
she had, now gay as a butterfly, now brooding as night. Any touch of
harshness she took to heart fearfully. She was the strangest compound
of pride and sell-disparagement; the qualities seemed mixed in her so
deeply that neither she nor any one knew of which her cloudy fits were
the result. Being so sensitive, she "fancied" things terribly. Things
that others did to her, and thought nothing of, often seemed to her
conclusive evidence that she was not loved by anybody, which was
dreadfully unjust, because she wanted to love everyone--nearly. Then
suddenly she would feel: "If they don't love me, I don't care. I don't
want anything of anybody!" Presently, all would blow away just like a
cloud, and she would love and be gay, until something fresh, perhaps not
at all meant to hurt her, would again hurt her horribly. In reality,
the whole household loved and admired her. But she was one of those
delicate-treading beings, born with a skin too few, who--and especially
in childhood--suffer from themselves in a world born with a skin too
many.

To Winton's extreme delight, she took to riding as a duck to water, and
knew no fear on horseback. She had the best governess he could get her,
the daughter of an admiral, and, therefore, in distressed circumstances;
and later on, a tutor for her music, who came twice a week all the
way from London--a sardonic man who cherished for her even more secret
admiration than she for him. In fact, every male thing fell in love
with her at least a little. Unlike most girls, she never had an epoch
of awkward plainness, but grew like a flower, evenly, steadily. Winton
often gazed at her with a sort of intoxication; the turn of her head,
the way those perfectly shaped, wonderfully clear brown eyes would
"fly," the set of her straight, round neck, the very shaping of her
limbs were all such poignant reminders of what he had so loved. And yet,
for all that likeness to her mother, there was a difference, both in
form and character. Gyp had, as it were, an extra touch of "breeding,"
more chiselling in body, more fastidiousness in soul, a little more
poise, a little more sheer grace; in mood, more variance, in mind, more
clarity and, mixed with her sweetness, a distinct spice of scepticism
which her mother had lacked.

In modern times t