cut, and told of gentle birth. Most men who knew
John Vavasor well, declared it to be a pity that he should spend his
time in signing accounts in Chancery Lane.

I have said that Alice Vavasor's big relatives cared but little for
her in her early years; but I have also said that they were careful
to undertake the charge of her education, and I must explain away
this little discrepancy. The biggest of these big people had hardly
heard of her; but there was a certain Lady Macleod, not very big
herself, but, as it were, hanging on to the skirts of those who
were so, who cared very much for Alice. She was the widow of a Sir
Archibald Macleod, K.C.B., who had been a soldier, she herself having
also been a Macleod by birth; and for very many years past--from
a time previous to the birth of Alice Vavasor--she had lived at
Cheltenham, making short sojourns in London during the spring, when
the contents of her limited purse would admit of her doing so. Of
old Lady Macleod I think I may say that she was a good woman;--that
she was a good woman, though subject to two of the most serious
drawbacks to goodness which can afflict a lady. She was a Calvinistic
Sabbatarian in religion, and in worldly matters she was a devout
believer in the high rank of her noble relatives. She could almost
worship a youthful marquis, though he lived a life that would
disgrace a heathen among heathens; and she could and did, in her own
mind, condemn crowds of commonplace men and women to all eternal
torments of which her imagination could conceive, because they
listened to profane music in a park on Sunday. Yet she was a good
woman. Out of her small means she gave much away. She owed no man
anything. She strove to love her neighbours. She bore much pain with
calm unspeaking endurance, and she lived in trust of a better world.
Alice Vavasor, who was after all only her cousin, she loved with an
exceeding love, and yet Alice had done very much to extinguish such
love. Alice, in the years of her childhood, had been brought up by
Lady Macleod; at the age of twelve she had been sent to a school at
Aix-la-Chapelle,--a comitatus of her relatives having agreed that
such was to be her fate, much in opposition to Lady Macleod's
judgement; at nineteen she had returned to Cheltenham, and after
remaining there for little more than a year, had expressed her
unwillingness to remain longer with her cousin. She could sympathize
neither with her relative's faults or vir