"
"So much the worse when she does begin," thought Lady Ridsdale.
When the preliminaries had all been discussed, and Miss Arleigh was
requested to meet her guardian, Lady Ridsdale could not control her
surprise at the sight of the girl's beauty.
"You could not tell whether she was pretty or not?" she said afterwards
to her husband. "William you must be blind."
She welcomed the young girl warmly. She kissed the fresh blooming face
that had all a woman's beauty with the innocence of a child. She clasped
her arms round the slender, girlish figure.
"You must learn to love me," she said, "to look on me in the place of
the mother you have lost."
And Marion Arleigh for the first time in her life imagined to herself
what a mother's love would be like.
"What a strange idea to keep you so long at school!" said Lady Ridsdale.
"We must do our best to atone for it."
"I should imagine that my guardian did not know what to do with me," she
replied, with a smile so bright and sweet that Lord Ridsdale at once
fell in love with her, as his wife had done before him.
"Where am I going to live?" asked Marion, after they had been talking
for some time.
"We are going to Thorpe Castle," replied Lady Ridsdale, "and I thought
you would enjoy being there with us."
"I shall enjoy anything and everything" said Marion. "I have all my life
before me, and it will be full of glorious possibilities."
Suddenly she paused, remembering that her life was settled and arranged;
it held no more possibilities; they were all at an end.
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