She had never thrown up her head, or even thrown up her nose, and told herself that she would demand something better than that.

But not the less was she alive to the knowledge that something better had come in her way, and that that something better was now her own.

She was very proud of her lover, and, no doubt, in some gently feminine way showed that she was so as she made her way about among her friends at Stratton.

Any idea that she herself was better educated, better looking, or more clever than her elder sisters, and that, therefore, she was deserving of a higher order of husband, had never entered her mind.

The Burtons in London--Theodore Burton and his wife--who knew her well, and who, of all the family, were best able to appreciate her worth, had long been of opinion that she deserved some specially favored lot in life.