pictures and lettering he had not learned to read, the little Marquess
had a fondness for books. He learned to read early, and once having
learned, was never so full of pleasure as when he had a volume to pore
over. At first he revelled in stories of magicians, giants, afrits, and
gnomes, but as soon as his tutors took him in hand he wakened every day
to some new interest. Languages ancient and modern he learned with
great rapidity, having a special fondness for them, and at thirteen
could speak French, high Dutch, and Italian excellently well for his
years, besides having a scholarly knowledge of Latin and Greek. His
tutor, Mr. Fox, an elderly scholar of honourable birth and many
attainments, was as proud of his talents and advancement as his female
attendants had been of his strength and beauty in his infancy. This
gentleman, whose income had been reduced by misfortune, who had lost
his wife and children tragically by one illness, and who had come to
undertake his pupil an almost brokenhearted man, found in the promise
of this young mind a solace he had never hoped to know again.

"I have taught young gentlemen before," he remarked privately to
Mistress Halsell--"one at least with royal blood in his veins, though
he was not called prince--but my lord Marquess has a fire I have seen
in no other. To set him to work upon a new branch of study is like
setting a flame to brushwood. 'Tis as though he burned his way to that
he would reach." The same fire expressed itself in all he did. He was
passionately fond of all boyish sports, and there was no bodily feat he
undertook which he did not finally perform better than others of his
age performed it. He could leap, run, fence, shoot at a mark; there was
no horse he could not ride, and at ten he stood as tall as a boy of
fourteen, and was stalwart and graceful into the bargain. Of his beauty
there could be no question, it being of an order which marked him in
any assembly. 'Twas not only that his features were of so fine a