hich she had figured in a "court-card" quadrille at her
aunt's country house.

The dresses were instantly confiscated and the necessary punishment
promptly administered; but the remembrance of Jessie's extraordinary
outrage on bedroom discipline lasted long enough to become one of
the traditions of the school, and she and her sister-culprits were
thenceforth hailed as the "queens" of the four "suites" by their
class-companions whenever the mistress's back was turned, Whatever might
have become of the nicknames thus employed in relation to the
other three girls, such a mock title as The Queen of Hearts was too
appropriately descriptive of the natural charm of Jessie's character,
as well as of the adventure in which she had taken the lead, not to rise
naturally to the lips of every one who knew her. It followed her to her
aunt's house--it came to be as habitually and familiarly connected with
her, among her friends of all ages, as if it had been formally inscribed
on her baptismal register; and it has stolen its way into these pages
because it falls from my pen naturally and inevitably, exactly as it
often falls from my lips in real life.

When Jessie left school the first difficulty presented itself--in other
words, the necessity arose of fulfilling the conditions of the will. At
that time I was already settled at The Glen Tower, and her living six
weeks in our dismal solitude and our humdrum society was, as she herself
frankly wrote me word, quite out of the question. Fortunately, she had
always got on well with her uncle and his family; so she exerted her
liberty of choice, and, much to her own relief and to mine also, passed
her regular six weeks of probation, year after year, under Mr. Richard
Yelverton's roof.

During this period I heard of her regularly, sometimes from my
fellow-guardian, sometimes from my son George, who, whenever his
military duties allowed him the opportunity, contrived to see her, now
at her aunt's house, and now at Mr. Yelverton's. The particulars of her
character and conduct, which I gleaned in this way, more than sufficed
to convince me that the poor major's plan for the careful training
of his daughter's disposition, though plausible enough in theory, was
little better than a total failure in practice. Miss Jessie, to use the
expressive common phrase, took after her aunt. She was as generous, as
impulsive, as light-hearted, as fond of change, and gayety, and fine
clothes--in short, as co