The daughter, however, Mrs Hartshorne hated and disliked in the strongest manner possible. She grew up uncared for, except as regarded frequent and summary corrections for childish misdemeanours; and if it had not been for the boy Tom she would have been altogether neglected. Little Susan was an eyesore to her mother in consequence of her being the only one provided for in Roger Hartshorne's will independently of the mother, to whom all the rest of the property, excepting of course the entail, was bequeathed without reservation. Mrs Hartshorne considered her own child as a species of interloper or invader of her rights, and treated her accordingly with neglect and almost cruelty when the squire was no longer able to look after and protect her. The very fondness of the old man for his little girl had been even an additional incentive for her ill-treatment. When Susan had reached her fifteenth year--she was little more than a year older than Tom--the dislike of her mother culminated in an accident, which indeed might be characterised in worse terms, that somewhat checked the ill-treatment and harshness she had previously suffered. She had done some trifling thing or other one day which had offended her mother to fury, and she consequently, after beating her most unmercifully, had locked her up all one night in a solitary part of the house by herself. The little thing was of a very nervous, tender organisation; and the fright she suffered in the lonely darkness throughout the long hours of the night drove away her poor little wits. When the child was let out the next day she was in a raging fever, and when she recovered from that, thanks to old Doctor Jolly (who was unremitting in his care, after frightening the mother by declaring her to be almost a murderess), she was never herself again. She remained quietly passive under any or every treatment of the mother "half-silly," as the poor folks say, and half-silly she was now still, although she was almost one-and-twenty. Her mental disorder was of a pathetic description--a sort of melancholia, and although her mother had procured governesses for her, and she knew, like a parrot, as much as most girls of her age in the matter of education, she never exhibited any likes or dislikes, or preferences, except for music, of which she was passionately fond: everything else that was taught her she learnt in a machine-like way. Susan would spend hours each day, particularly in the evening, playing on an old chamber-organ, which occupied one of the disused rooms of the house, wild, weird, melancholy melodies which appeared to soothe her, and give her the only sense of enjoyment she seemed to possess. Tom and Doctor Jolly were the only people she cared to see; her mother she disliked greatly, and had a sort of trembling fit whenever she came across her or passed her in the passages of the house; and the old female domestics she barely tolerated, although she liked