Of the second family there were two remaining, two daughters, one of whom had been married and had settled in England; the other, who had not married, living with her. They were twins, and some five years younger than their elder brother. And neither did they come often to Earl’s-hall. The same objection was in everybody’s way--there was no room for them. And Sir Ludovic disliked letter-writing. They came occasionally to see their father, and to hold up their hands and shake their heads at the way in which little Margaret was being brought up. But what could these ladies do? To live at Earl’s-hall was impossible, and to go and stay in a little cottage in the Kirkton, all for the sake of a small step-sister, and without even any security that they could really be of any use to her, was something more of a test than their lukewarm family affection could bear. And they hesitated about recommending a governess; for with an old gentleman so much addicted to marriage, who could tell what might happen? Though he was seventy-five, he was the same man as ever, and very fascinating when he chose to exert himself; and to have a new Lady Leslie would be a still greater horror than to have a young rustic for a step-sister. And then the child would be rich. It does not require much learning, as Mrs. Hardcastle says, to spend fifteen hundred a year. So that Margaret was left alone. Her mother had been the richest of all Sir Ludovic’s wives. She had been--more wonderful still--a young beauty, courted and flattered, and how it was that she passed over all her younger admirers and fixed upon a man of fifty-five, a poor old Scotch baronet, nobody could divine. But she did so, and came home with him to Earl’s-hall, and brightened it a while with her youth and her wealth, and would have done wonders for the old house. Nothing less had been intended than to rebuild the ruin, though Sir Ludovic himself discouraged this, as the house, he reminded her, must pass into other hands. But poor Lady Leslie’s fine projects came to a premature end, by means of a bad cold which she caught just after her little girl was born. She died, and the last gleam of prosperity died away with her. Margaret, it was true, was rich, and the allowance her trustees made her was no small help even now to the impoverished household; though, indeed, the trouble these trustees gave, her father thought, was more than the money was worth. They wrote to Sir Ludovic about her education till he was roused to swear at, though not to profit by, the perpetual remonstrance. “Education! what would they have at her age? A mere child,” he said. “Eh, Sir Ludovic! but she’s sixteen,” Bell said, who was the only one in the house who ever ventured to keep up an argument with her old master.