She is one of a large family, and was always considered the black sheep, not so much by her brothers and sisters, as by her mother.

Nothing she was, or said, or did, was ever right.

When Lord Ingleby met her, and I suppose saw her incipient possibilities, she was a tall, gawky girl, with lovely eyes, a sweet, sensitive mouth, and a what-on-earth-am-I-going-to-do-next expression on her face.

He was twenty years her senior, but fell most determinedly in love with her and, though her mother pressed upon him all her other daughters in turn, he would have Myra or nobody.

When he proposed to her it was impossible at first to make her understand what he meant.