She loved her father, had the greatest respect for his character, but still at the same time she looked upon him as a sort of gaoler, and gloried in evading his rules. Her brothers she did not see a very great deal of. They spent very little time at Broxbridge Hall; they went to Eton and from thence to Oxford, and were principally under the charge of tutors. Lord Ethalwood had impressed upon them in a most marked manner the nobility of their race and the obligation they were under to keep their name unsullied and honour unstained; he left the rest to their teachers. The name of Lady Ethalwood no one in the household durst mention; his lordship had given orders to that effect. Even his sons and daughter never once alluded to their dead mother. Whatever they knew or had heard about her they had the prudence to keep to themselves. The years flew by and the Honourable Miss Ethalwood was approaching her eighteenth summer, and her father was looking forward to the time when she would be presented at Court and take her place among the ladies of the fashionable world. He almost dreaded this ordeal, for he felt that she would, as a natural consequence, become hurried on into a vortex of pleasure, and be constrained to keep up an incessant round of visits; but a greater evil, a more serious estrangement, was destined to take place before the dreaded time arrived. When his lordship took up his quarters in his town residence he left his daughter at the old ancestral home, where, during his absence, she reigned supreme. This just suited her, for, like her father, she was immensely fond of having her own way. With all his intellect and acquirements, how blind was the haughty nobleman to the common affairs of life――how little did he reckon upon the danger which beset his daughter’s path at this time! An Italian professor taught her music and singing. He was, as many Italians are, a remarkably handsome young man, and he had a voice which was simply magnificent. Bending over the piano, and turning over the leaves of the music, he had ample opportunity afforded him of coming in close contact with his fair pupil. His visits――or lessons would be the more correct term――were much more frequent during his lordship’s absence than they were when he was residing at Broxbridge; even the servants could not help noticing this. A thought came into the head of the music-master――indeed, it had been there for a very long time; it was this―― “What a grand future I shall make for myself,” he murmured, “if I woo and win the Honourable Miss Ethalwood!” To do the Italian professor justice, he was really not actuated by mercenary motives. He had conceived a passion for his pupil, and, as a natural consequence, she became aware of this without his uttering a word relative to so important a subject. The professor had all the qualities to captivate one of the opposite sex.