Lady Peveril did not say "be comforted," but she ventured to promise that the blossom should ripen to fruit.
"Never, never!" said Bridgenorth; "take the unhappy child away, and let me only know when I shall wear black for her--Wear black!" he exclaimed, interrupting himself, "what other colour shall I wear during the remainder of my life ?" "I will take the child for a season," said Lady Peveril, "since the sight of her is so painful to you; and the little Alice shall share the nursery of our Julian, until it shall be pleasure and not pain for you to look on her." "That hour will never come," said the unhappy father; "her doom is written--she will follow the rest--God's will be done .-- Lady, I thank you--I trust her to your care; and I thank God that my eye shall not see her dying agonies." Without detaining the reader's attention longer on this painful theme, it is enough to say that the Lady Peveril did undertake the duties of a mother to the little orphan; and perhaps it was owing, in a great measure, to her judicious treatment of the infant, that its feeble hold of life was preserved, since the glimmering spark might probably have been altogether smothered, had it, like the Major's former children, undergone the over-care and over-nursing of a mother 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.