Meanwhile, at the farm little Doris grew under the protection of Mark and Patty, and yearly, as the day came round which was the anniversary of her arrival, Mark received a hundred pounds, in golden sovereigns, or in fresh, new Bank of England notes. And Mark, in his sturdy honesty, and far-seeing common sense, developed rare qualities as a guardian. Plain man as he was, he guessed at what a girl of good family or high social position should know, and preparing Doris for that position to which some day her unknown mother might call her, he resolved that she should receive accomplishments. Fortune favored him. In Brakebury lived a Frenchman, a political exile, a gentleman of high accomplishments. Monsieur D'Anvers was held in great awe in the village; his courtly grace, the foreign tongues he spoke, the pictures that he drew, the water-color landscapes which he painted and sold in London, his playing on various instruments--all lifted him far above his neighbors. To Monsieur D'Anvers went honest Mark, when Doris was eight years old, and offered him fifty pounds a year to tutor the two little girls, the brown and the fair. "You will teach Mattie what she wants to learn, and what she can learn," said Mark; "but Doris can learn anything, and I want you to teach her all you know." So Doris was taken daily to her tutor, as she had been to the school of the Misses Hopwell, and the old French courtier bowed down and worshiped her, as in all her life did all the men who were brought into contact with her. To teach her was a labor of love. Her aptitude was marvelous. She learned to speak French and German fluently; she drew and painted with taste and skill; her little fingers, with some inherited grace, flew over the ivory keys, or touched the shining cords of harp and guitar. Manners--the manners of courts--the banished Frenchman taught her, and she learned them intuitively. "_Mon Dieu!_" cried the old gentleman; "but this child is lovely! She surpasses Ninon D'Enclos and Diana de Poitiers! She has spirit, wit, originality--everything that is admirable! A queen might be proud to be her mother!" Doris swayed and enchanted her old preceptor. Mattie, quietly studying French, drawing, and English literature, was left far behind by her foster-sister, who was speedily learning all that the tutor could teach. "You should have been born a princess, _ma belle_!" the old man would say, delighted with some flash of wit, some piquant performance. "What will you do with all your beauty here on a farm?" "Am I very beautiful?" demanded Doris. "More beautiful than Helen, for whom thousands died; than Cleopatra, who had the world's conquerors at her feet! What will you do with so much beauty?" "Make the most of it!" and the words jarred on the aristocrat. All men said the same. Even the rector unwisely cried: "Little maid, you have beauty enough to turn your head. Do not let it make you proud." "Who made me beautiful?" asked Doris. "God, my child."