“My mother was Dorothea Lyle, born in Alnwick, in the same thatched cottage Mrs. Schuyler has undoubtedly described to you. She was the eldest child and beautiful,—the Lyles are all good-looking, and mother was pre-eminently so, with a tolerable education, too, acquired from a lady in the neighborhood who was interested in her, and in whose house she was a nursery governess. It was there she met my father, the youngest son of an old Scotch family, which had a title in reversion and a good deal of money. It was a runaway match, which the proud Macphersons tried to overthrow. But they could not, and if they had, my father would have married his beautiful Dolly again. He was very fond of her, and taught her a great deal himself, so that my first recollections of her are of as fine a lady in speech and manner as any I have ever seen. I was born in Naples, where father tried to earn his living by painting, for he was a natural artist and we were very poor, as his family turned him off and would not receive him with his wife. “It was about this time that Mrs. Lyle wrote to mother of sickness and destitution, and asked for money in her need, but alas, we had none, and mother sent these Cairngorms, which father bought for her when she was married, and which they had never been able to have set for herself. She thought her mother could sell them for bread, but she would not. Her fortunes brightened a little just then, and she kept the stones carefully, meaning them for my sister on her bridal day; but that day never came. I told you of my sister once, and that you looked like her. She was so beautiful, and I loved her so much, but she died when she was twelve years old, and the only picture we had of her was burned. Our fortunes were mending then. The Macpherson mother was dead, and the father sent us money, and when mother died, two years after Dora, father and I were invited to Glenthorpe, in the north of Scotland, and there father died, and by my grandfather’s will I came into possession, at his death, of a large sum of money, and now, by another death, I have a right, if I choose, to take my wife to Glenthorpe, should I ever have one, which I probably never shall, for the girl I love is too proud to marry _me_, knowing who I am.” Gertie thought of Julia Schuyler, but she did not speak, and after a moment Robert continued: “You wonder, perhaps, why I never told this before, and I blush to own that I was ashamed to do it and acknowledge that I was anything to this man by whose grave I stand, or anything to that family whom Mr. and Mrs. Schuyler and Godfrey have seen. I think people who have been very poor, and have come up from the great unwashed, have that feeling more than those to the manor born, and though I have tried to be kind to my mother’s friends so far as gifts are concerned, I have shrunk from coming in contact with them, especially the Aunt Nesbit, of whom it is no slander to say she is very _coarse_.