rendered nervously cautious and anxious by so many successive losses.
The lady was the more ready to undertake this charge, that she herself
had lost two infant children; and that she attributed the preservation
of the third, now a fine healthy child of three years old, to Julian's
being subjected to rather a different course of diet and treatment
than was then generally practised. She resolved to follow the same
regiment with the little orphan, which she had observed in the case of
her own boy; and it was equally successful. By a more sparing use of
medicine, by a bolder admission of fresh air, by a firm, yet cautious
attention to encourage rather than to supersede the exertions of
nature, the puny infant, under the care of an excellent nurse,
gradually improved in strength and in liveliness.

Sir Geoffrey, like most men of his frank and good-natured disposition,
was naturally fond of children, and so much compassionated the sorrows
of his neighbour, that he entirely forgot his being a Presbyterian,
until it became necessary that the infant should be christened by a
teacher of that persuasion.

This was a trying case--the father seemed incapable of giving
direction; and that the threshold of Martindale Castle should be
violated by the heretical step of a dissenting clergyman, was matter
of horror to its orthodox owner. He had seen the famous Hugh Peters,
with a Bible in one hand and a pistol in the other, ride in triumph
through the court-door when Martindale was surrendered; and the
bitterness of that hour had entered like iron into his soul. Yet such
was Lady Peveril's influence over the prejudices of her husband, that
he was induced to connive at the ceremony taking place in a remote
garden house, which was not properly within the precincts of the
Castle-wall. The lady even dared to be present while the ceremony was