rls, Lady Darcy, to worry myself about
their complexions."

"Oh yes. Well, I'm sure they both look charming; but Rosalind will go
much into society, and of course,"--She checked herself before the
sentence was finished; but Mrs Asplin was quick enough to understand
the imputation that the complexions of a vicar's daughters were but of
small account, but that it was a very different matter when the
Honourable Rosalind Darcy was concerned. She understood, but she was
neither hurt nor annoyed by the inferences, only a little sad and very,
very pitiful. She knew the story of the speaker's life, and the reason
why she looked forward to Rosalind's entrance into society with such
ambition. Lady Darcy had been the daughter of poor but well-born
parents, and had married the widower, Lord Darcy, not because she loved
him or had any motherly feeling for his two orphan boys, but simply and
solely for a title and establishment, and a purse full of money. Given
these, she had fondly imagined that she was going to be perfectly happy.
No more screwing and scraping to keep up appearances; no more living in
dulness and obscurity; she would be Lady Darcy, the beautiful young wife
of a famous man. So, with no thought in her heart but for her own
worldly advancement, Beatrice Fairfax stood before God's altar and vowed
to love, honour, and obey a man for whom she had no scrap of affection,
and whom she would have laughed to scorn if he had been poor and
friendless. She married him, but the life which followed was not by any
means all that she had expected. Lord Darcy had heavy money losses,
which obliged him to curtail expenses almost immediately after his
wedding; her own health broke down, and it was a knife in her heart to
know that her boy was only the third son, and that the two big, handsome
lads at Eton would inherit the lion's share of their father's property.
Hector, the Lifeguardsman, and Oscar, the Dragoon, were for ever running
into debt and making fresh demands on her husband's purse. She and her
children had to suffer for their extravagances; while Robert, her only
son, was growing up a shy, awkward lad, who hated society, and asked
nothing better than to be left in the country alone with his frogs and
his beetles. Ambition after ambition had failed her, until now all her
hopes were centred in Rosalind, the beautiful daughter, in whom she saw
a reproduction of herself in the days of her girlhood. She had had a
dull a