A few words from my fellow-guardian, Mr. Richard Yelverton, and a
little after-consideration of some of my deceased friend's
peculiarities of disposition and feeling, to which I had not
hitherto attached sufficient importance, were enough to make me
understand the motives by which he had been influenced in
providing for the future of his child.

Major Yelverton had raised himself to a position of affluence and
eminence from a very humble origin. He was the son of a small
farmer, and it was his pride never to forget this circumstance,
never to be ashamed of it, and never to allow the prejudices of
society to influence his own settled opinions on social questions
in general.

Acting, in all that related to his intercourse with the world, on
such principles as these, the major, it is hardly necessary to
say, held some strangely heterodox opinions on the modern
education of girls, and on the evil influence of society over the
characters of women in general. Out of the strength of those
opinions, and out of the certainty of his conviction that his
sister did not share them, had grown that condition in his will
which removed his daughter from the influence of her aunt for six
consec utive weeks in every year. Lady Westwick was the most
light-hearted, the most generous, the most impulsive of women;
capable, when any serious occasion called it forth, of all that
was devoted and self-sacrificing, but, at other and ordinary
times, constitutionally restless, frivolous, and eager for
perpetual gayety. Distrusting the sort of life which he knew his
daughter would lead under her aunt's roof, and at the same time