now the number of counties in England, Scotland, and Wales,
let alone Ireland; she did not know the difference between latitude and
longitude. She had had so many governesses: their accounts differed:
poor Ethel was bewildered by a multiplicity of teachers, and thought
herself a monster of ignorance. They gave her a book at a Sunday School,
and little girls of eight years old answered questions of which she knew
nothing. The place swam before her. She could not see the sun shining
on their fair flaxen heads and pretty faces. The rosy little children
holding up their eager hands, and crying the answer to this question and
that, seemed mocking her. She seemed to read in the book, "O Ethel, you
dunce, dunce, dunce!" She went home silent in the carriage, and burst
into bitter tears on her bed. Naturally a haughty girl of the highest
spirit, resolute and imperious, this little visit to the parish school
taught Ethel lessons more valuable than ever so much arithmetic and
geography. Clive has told me a story of her in her youth, which,
perhaps, may apply to some others of the youthful female aristocracy.
She used to walk, with other select young ladies and gentlemen, their
nurses and governesses, in a certain reserved plot of ground railed off
from Hyde Park, whereof some of the lucky dwellers in the neighbourhood
of Apsley House have a key. In this garden, at the age of nine or
thereabout, she had contracted an intimate friendship with the Lord
Hercules O'Ryan.--as every one of my gentle readers knows, one of
the sons of the Marquis of Ballyshannon. The Lord Hercules was a year
younger than Miss Ethel Newcome, which may account for the passion which
grew up between these young persons; it being a provision in nature that
a boy always falls in love with a girl older than himself, or rather,
perhaps, that a girl bestows her affections on a little boy, who submits
to receive them.

One day Sir Brian Newcome announced his intention to go to Newcome that
very morning, taking his family, and of course Ethel, with him. She was
inconsolable. "What will Lord Hercules do when he finds I am gone?" she
asked of her nurse.

The nurse endeavouring to soothe her, said, "Perhaps his lordship would
know nothing about the circumstance." "He will," said Miss Ethel--"he'll
read it in the newspaper." My Lord Hercules, it is to be hoped,
strangled this infant passion in the cradle; having long since married
Isabella, only daughter of ------ Grain