CHAPTER II.
THE LOVERS.
_IRENE DELANCY_ was a girl of quick, strong feelings, and an undisciplined will.

Her mother died before she reached her tenth year.

From that time she was either at home under the care of domestics, or within the scarcely more favorable surroundings of a boarding-school.

She grew up beautiful and accomplished, but capricious and with a natural impatience of control, that unwise reactions on the part of those who attempted to govern her in no degree tempered.
Hartley Emerson, as a boy, was self-willed and passionate, but possessed many fine qualities.

A weak mother yielded to his resolute struggles to have his own way, and so he acquired, at an early age, control over his own movements.