Sylvia Shapleigh was then eighteen, pretty and full of romance. That one interview with Skelton had been with her the dividing line between childhood and womanhood. She brooded over it, and as she grew older she fell in love with an imaginary Skelton, who was to come home and make her the grandest lady in the county. She began to look upon Deerchase as her own, and could picture vividly to herself her gay and splendid life there. She was haughty to the young squires who openly admired her, and secretly declared herself meat for their masters. She was proud and spirited to the last degree, and it seemed to her in her arrogance and inexperience, that Nature had destined her for something great; and what could be greater than to be Mrs. Richard Skelton? When the news came of Skelton’s marriage, Mrs. Shapleigh was luckily away from home on a visit of several days. Sylvia, on hearing of the marriage, rose and went to her own room, where she gave way to a passion of disappointment as acute as if the bond between Richard Skelton and herself were a real one, instead of the mere figment of a child’s imagination. It made no difference that it was wholly baseless and fanciful. In that simple and primitive age, romantic young things like Sylvia had plenty of time and opportunity to cultivate sentiment. The only really splendid thing she ever saw in her life was Deerchase, and she saw it whenever she chose to turn her eyes toward it. She knew nothing of the power of new scenes to make one forget the old ones, and the extreme prettiness of the story that she made up for Skelton and herself charmed her. But then came this sudden disillusion. In the twinkling of an eye her castle in Spain fell, to rise no more.