Lord William Daw sojourned at Winchester, and became a daily visitor at Compton Lodge. Colonel Compton, to break the exclusiveness of his visits to one house, introduced him at large among the gentry of the neighborhood. And numerous were the tea, card, and cotillion parties got up for the sole purpose of entertaining the young scion of nobility, where it was only necessary to secure Miss De Lancie’s presence in order to ensure his lordship’s dutiful attendance. Mr. Murray chafed and fretted at what he called his pupil’s consummate infatuation, and talked of writing home to his father, “the marquis.” Marguerite scorned, or seemed to scorn, his lordship’s pretensions, until one morning at breakfast, Colonel Compton, half seriously, half jestingly, said: “Sweetheart, you do not appear to join in the respect universally shown to this young stranger.” “If,” said Marguerite, “the young man had any distinguished personal excellence, I should not be backward in recognizing it; but he is at best--Lord William Daw! Now who is Lord William Daw that I should bow down and worship him?” “Lord William Daw, my dear, is the second son of the most noble, the Marquis of Eaglecliff, as you have already seen announced with a flourish of editorial trumpets, by our title-despising and very consistent democratic newspapers! He is heir presumptive, and as I learn from Mr. Murray, rather more than heir presumptive to his father’s titles and estates; for it appears that the marquis has been twice married, and that his eldest son, by his first marchioness, derives a very feeble constitution from his mother; and it is not supposed that he will ever marry, or that he will survive his father; ergo, the hopes of the marquis for re-union rest with his second son, Lord William Daw; finis, that young nobleman’s devoirs are not quite beneath the consideration even of a young lady of ‘one of the first families of Virginia,’ who is besides a belle, a blue, and a freeholder.” “Marguerite, future marchioness of Eaglecliff, when you are married will your ladyship please to remember one poor Cornelia Compton, who lived in an old country house near Winchester, and once enjoyed your favor?” said Miss Compton. Marguerite shrugged her shoulders with an expression to the effect that the future succession of the Marquisate of Eaglecliff was a matter of no moment to her. But from this time, Marguerite’s friends accused her, with uncertain justice, of showing somewhat more favor to the boyish lover, who might one day set the coronet of a marchioness upon her brow. When rallied upon this point, she would reply: “There are certainly qualities which I do like in the young man; he is frank, simple and intelligent, and above all, is perfectly free from affectation, or pretension of any sort. Upon individual worth alone he is entitled to polite consideration.”