this poor lady's custody were defrayed by the Earl of Scroope.




CHAPTER I.

SCROOPE MANOR.


Some years ago, it matters not how many, the old Earl of Scroope lived
at Scroope Manor in Dorsetshire. The house was an Elizabethan structure
of some pretensions, but of no fame. It was not known to sight-seers,
as are so many of the residences of our nobility and country gentlemen.
No days in the week were appointed for visiting its glories, nor was
the housekeeper supposed to have a good thing in perquisites from
showing it. It was a large brick building facing on to the village
street,--facing the village, if the hall-door of a house be the main
characteristic of its face; but with a front on to its own grounds from
which opened the windows of the chief apartments. The village of Scroope
consisted of a straggling street a mile in length, with the church and
parsonage at one end, and the Manor-house almost at the other. But
the church stood within the park; and on that side of the street, for
more than half its length, the high, gloomy wall of the Earl's domain
stretched along in face of the publicans, bakers, grocers, two butchers,
and retired private residents whose almost contiguous houses made
Scroope itself seem to be more than a village to strangers. Close to the
Manor and again near to the church, some favoured few had been allowed
to build houses and to cultivate small gardens taken, as it were, in
notches out of the Manor grounds; but these tenements must have been