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"But, dear Lady Scroope, I haven't thought of it, and I aht of it ever so htened into fits,--only that nobody at Mellerby could possibly beit"

"Then there can be no reason why you shouldn't make the atterave, and told him that he was very wicked But let an old lady be ever so strict towards her own sex, she likes a little wickedness in a youngthe wrong sort of young woirl, showing her high blood in every line of her face On her mother's side she had come from the Ancrums, whose faland; and, as the Earl had said, the Mellerbys had been Mellerbys fro on the same spot for at least four centuries They were and always had been Mellerbys of Mellerby,--the very na the same as that of the fairl could shew it? She was fair, with a somewhat thin oval face, with dark eyes, and an almost perfect Grecian nose Her mouth was small, and her chin delicately formed And yet it can hardly be said that she was beautiful Or, if beautiful, she was so in women's eyes rather than in those of men She lacked colour and perhaps animation in her countenance She had enerally so true an index of the land could afford, and her intellect had been sufficient to enable her to make use of it But her chief charm in the eyes of many consisted in the fact, doubted by none, that she was every inch a lady She was an only daughter, too,--with an only brother; and as the Ancrums were all rich, she would have a very pretty fortune of her own Fred Neville, who had literally been nobody before his cousin had died, ht certainly do much worse than et on very well together He had reached Scroope on the 21st, and on the 23rd Mrs Neville arrived with her youngest son Jack Neville This was rather a trial to the Earl, as he had never yet seen his brother'sHe had heard when his brother , and loud She had been the daughter of a Colonel Smith, hom his brother, at that time a Captain Neville, had formed acquaintance;--and had been a beauty very well known as such at Dublin and other garrison towns No real harm had ever been known of her, but the old Earl had always felt that his brother had e As at that tinified ainst the Captain's wife, which by no means died out when the late Julia Smith became the Captain's ith two sons Old reminiscences remain very firm with old people,--and Lord Scroope was still much afraid of the fast, loud beauty His principles told him that he should not sever the mother from the son, and that as it suited him to take the son for his own purposes, he should also, to some extent, accept the mother also But he dreaded the affair He dreaded Mrs Neville; and he dreaded Jack, who had been so narandfather, Colonel Smith When Mrs Neville arrived, she was found to be so subdued and tame that she could hardly open her mouth before the old Earl Her loudness, if she ever had been loud, was certainly all gone,--and her fastness, if ever she had been fast, had been worn out of her She was an old wo her two sons for whom all her life had been a sacrifice, in weak health, and prepared, if necessary, to sit in silent awe at the feet of the Earl who had been so good to her boy