There were few hopes and little enough pleasure in her life before; but what is left to her now?
_De mortuis nil nisi bonum._ But just picture to yourself for a moment, man, what her life has been." He stopped and drew breath, and strove to speak calmly and dispassionately.
"I was born in the valley of the Youle," he said.

"My people live in a cottage--they call it a house, but it's just a farm--on the river,--Cullacott.

I was a raw medical student when _she_ came here as a child.

Her father was killed in the Afghan War.

He had quarrelled with his uncle, they said, who afterwards succeeded to the earldom; so she was left to the guardianship of Sir Timothy, a distant cousin.
Every one was sorry for her, because Sir Timothy was her guardian, and because she was a little young thing to be left to the tender mercies of the two old ladies, who were old even then.