ough she was, she set the field on fire. She
learned full early how to coquet and roll her fine eyes; but it is also
true that she was not much of a languisher, as all her ogling was of a
destructive or proudly-attacking kind. It was her habit to leave others
to languish, and herself to lead them with disdainful vivacity to doing
so. She was the talk, and, it must be admitted, the scandal, of the
county by the day she was fifteen. The part wherein she lived was a
boisterous hunting shire where there were wide ditches and high hedges to
leap, and rough hills and moors to gallop over, and within the region
neither polite life nor polite education were much thought of; but even
in the worst portions of it there were occasional virtuous matrons who
shook their heads with much gravity and wonder over the beautiful
Mistress Clorinda.

CHAPTER IV--Lord Twemlow's chaplain visits his patron's kinsman, and
Mistress Clorinda shines on her birthday night

Uncivilised and almost savage as her girlish life was, and unregulated by
any outward training as was her mind, there were none who came in contact
with her who could be blind to a certain strong, clear wit, and
unconquerableness of purpose, for which she was remarkable. She ever
knew full well what she desired to gain or to avoid, and once having
fixed her mind upon any object, she showed an adroitness and brilliancy
of resource, a control of herself and others, the which there was no
circumventing. She never made a blunder because she could not control
the expression of her emotions; and when she gave way to a passion, 'twas
because she chose to do so, having naught to lose, and in the midst of
all their riotous jesting with her the boon companions of Sir Jeoffry
knew this.

"Had she a secret to keep, child though she is," said Eldershawe, "there
is none--man or woman--who could scare or surprise it from her; and 'tis
a strange quality to note so early in a female creature."

She spent her days with her father and his dissolute friends, treated
half like a boy, half a fantastical queen, until she was fourteen. She
hunted and coursed, shot birds, leaped hedges and ditches, reigned at the
riotous feastings, and coquetted with these mature, and in some cases
elderly, men, as if she looked forward to doing naught else all her life.

But one day, after she had gone out hunting with her father, riding Rake,
who had been given to her, and wearing her scarlet coat, br