"At seventeen most young girls have begun to think of love and lovers." Miss Carleton prided herself on the fact that in her establishment such matters were entirely avoided.
"There is nothing of the kind," she replied, earnestly.

"I do not believe that Miss Arleigh has even begun to think of such things." "So much the worse when she does begin," thought Lady Ridsdale.
When the preliminaries had all been discussed, and Miss Arleigh was requested to meet her guardian, Lady Ridsdale could not control her surprise at the sight of the girl's beauty.
"You could not tell whether she was pretty or not ?" she said afterwards to her husband.

"William you must be blind." She welcomed the young girl warmly.

She kissed the fresh blooming face that had all a woman's beauty with the innocence of a child.

She clasped her arms round the slender, girlish figure.
"You must learn to love me," she said, "to look on me in the place of the mother you have lost." And Marion Arleigh for the first time in her life imagined to herself what a mother's love would be like.
"What a strange idea to keep you so long at school!" said Lady Ridsdale.
"We must do our best to atone for it." "I should imagine that my guardian did not know what to do with me," she replied, with a smile so bright and sweet that Lord Ridsdale at once fell in love with her, as his wife had done before him.
"Where am I going to live ?" asked Marion, after they had been talking for some time.
"We are going to Thorpe Castle," replied Lady Ridsdale, "and I thought you would enjoy being there with us." "I shall enjoy anything and everything" said Marion.