Her parents, says Lola, being somehow impressed with the idea that she was being petted and spoiled (by the gloomy Calvinists aforesaid), she was removed to the family of Sir Jasper Nicolls, of London. It is to be observed that neither now nor after do we hear of her father's relatives, who one would suppose to have been her proper guardians. This circumstance certainly discountenances the theory of Edward Gilbert's exalted parentage. Sir Jasper Nicolls, K.C.B., Major-General, was succeeded by Major-General Watson in the command of the Meerut Division in 1831, in which year it may be presumed he returned to England, and took his friend Craigie's stepdaughter under his wing. Like most Indian officers, he preferred to spend his pension out of England, and gladly hurried his girls off to Paris to complete their education. They missed the July Revolution by a year; but all France was presently ringing with the exploits of the brave Duchesse de Berry, who became the idol of the _pensionnats_. To Lola, no doubt, she seemed a heroine worthier of imitation than the young Princess Alexandrina Victoria, who was just then touring her uncle's dominions. The romantic fever was at its height in Paris. To her schoolfellows the beautiful Anglo-Indian girl, with her Spanish name and ancestry, must have appeared a new edition of De Musset's "Andalouse." The influences about her at this time tended to stimulate all that was romantic and adventurous in her temperament, and determined, perhaps, her action in the first great crisis of her life. II A RUNAWAY MATCH