There is much to be said in excuse for the almost proverbial arrogance and love of power which marks the woman who is born to greatness. She is so often taught--if not indeed by words, at least by the deference of those around her, by the inevitable yielding to her will, and by the _kotooing_ of dependents--that she is, in her way, a Queen, that it would be rather surprising if any humbler ideas of her own position should find entrance into her mind. A great deal has been advanced and written on the importance of public schools as tending to the discovery of that imaginary line known as a young gentleman’s “level;” but whether this hoped-for good is ever attained, and if attained whether it be worth the high price often paid for its possession, must remain an open question; the distressing truth however cannot, I fear, be disputed, that the “level” of a young lady possessed of forty thousand pounds per annum is never likely to be found, save and except in rare cases of matrimonial felicity--in those exceptional cases, I mean, where there is no struggle for power, where the Salic law as exemplified in the nineteenth-century wife is virtually set aside, and where (but this is a _sine quâ non_) the husband is in every way worthy of this heroic act of voluntary self-abnegation. That the Lady Millicent Vavasour was very far from being the model woman whose price is far above rubies will very speedily be seen. She was a cold and unattractive child, and she grew up to be in many respects a cold and unattractive woman; but that she was so must in a great measure be attributed to the peculiarity of her “bringing up,” and, strange to say, to the regretable fact that she was not born to be a man. The Earl and Countess of Gillingham were both what I must be permitted to describe as “family-mad.” That the Vavasours were the most ancient, the noblest, and most exalted of all the races of men upon earth, this elderly and highly respectable couple religiously believed. Previously to her union with the last male of this ancient family, the Lady Caroline M‘Intyre (the respected mother of Lord Gillingham’s heiress) had entertained a foolish prepossession in favour of the old Scottish blood which ran in her own blue veins; but the engrafting of her northern race in the still nobler stock of the Vavasours of Gillingham was sufficient to inoculate her with every prejudice entertained by Richard, eleventh earl of that most princely house. They were not--barring this one folly--either a particularly silly or an especially objectionable pair. They were a little grand and distant to those who _might_ be so daring as to claim equality with themselves, but to their clearly-marked inferiors and to the actual _poor_ they were kind, generous, and “pleasant.”