Mr. Ravensworth was a tall, gentlemanly-looking man of about fifty; much anxiety had prematurely whitened his hair, and sorrow ploughed the lines deep in his brow with her "burning share." He had been born to large property, but had suddenly lost his fortune, and almost immediately afterwards his partner in life, leaving him to contend against poverty at his very door with four infant children, of whom the eldest was barely seven and the youngest an infant in arms. Mr. Ravensworth then entered the Bar, and being an uncommonly clever, and, what was more, a working man, soon began to rise in his profession, and was able to build and furnish a pretty villa on the seashore, some miles from Edinburgh, where he practised, and to educate his children well and live at least in comfort. As he had prospects too, being next heir to a fine property in Haddington, he was not without hopes of being able to raise his family to the position they had formerly occupied in society, and see his house once more on the top of the fickle wheel that had crushed him so low. He did not spend his time in unavailing lament over parted grandeur, but strove by hard and steady labour to launch on the tide, "that, taken at its height, leads on to fortune." His eldest son George entered the army when only seventeen, and was rapidly rising in his profession, when again the hand of death snatched another victim, and the father's hopes seemed once more shattered. Still beaten down, but not conquered, he lived and laboured for his family. Ellen, now his eldest child, was a remarkably fine-looking girl; she was much above the average height, and built on a large scale, with a commanding look, and seemed born, as her flatterers told her, to be a duchess. Nature had given her a lavish abundance of fair brown hair, which, confined by the frail net that scarcely held its prisoner, rolled half way down her back and contrasted sadly with the garb of woe she still wore for her soldier brother. Her blue eyes were full of soul and expression. It has been said that when a Scotch girl is pretty she is something quite unusual, and if ever there was a perfect beauty it was Ellen; whatever you looked on was matchless, whether it was her eyes beaming like the mirror of an innocent heart--or her white Grecian nose--pearly teeth--or again the well-developed contour of her form--her round white arm or well-turned and small foot and ankle. Each was perfect--nothing that we could have wished altered. Her still face perhaps gave her the appearance of being a year or two older than she really was, a fault--if we may so call it--not uncommon with Scotch beauties; but the moment she opened her lips, or smiled, the illusion vanished. Johnny, as her younger, and now only, brother used to be always called, was an open-faced, good-looking boy of fifteen, and promised to grow up like his father. Of Maude we need only say with Lord Byron, she was--