This very decided young lady is the only child and supposed heiress of Gwynne of Glanyravon, as her father is usually called. She is an aristocratic-looking personage, with a certain I-will-have-my-own-way air, that you cannot help recognising at once. She is rather taller than most tall women, and the tokens of decision in her carriage, eyes, voice, and general deportment would be disagreeable, but for the extreme grace of her figure, the unaffected ease of her manner, and the remarkable clearness and sweetness of her voice. She is handsome, too, with a noble forehead, sensible grey eyes, glossy chestnut hair, and a very fine complexion. The many of her nominal friends and admirers who at heart dislike her, prophesy that in a few years she will be coarse, and say that she is already too masculine; but the few who love her, think that she will improve both in person and mind, as she rubs off the pride and self-opinionativeness of twenty years of country life against the wholesome iron of society and the world. But we shall see.
At present she is fortunate enough to rule everybody she comes in contact with; her father, his servants, his tenants, the poor, the very mendicants that come to the door.
Certainly there is something very charming in her appearance, as she hurries up the fine old avenue that leads to her ancestral home. The ease of her port, the graceful dignity of her extreme haste, the heightened colour, and the glowing eye, are all very handsome, in spite of the coarseness in perspective. The poor footman can scarcely keep up with her; he has not found the last twenty years at Glanyravon productive of the same lightness of step to him, as to his young mistress, and wishes she were a little less agile.
A handsome country house in a good park has not often in itself much of the picturesque. Ruskin would not consider Glanyravon, with its heavy porch, massive square walls, and innumerable long windows, a good specimen of architectural beauty; still it is a most comfortable dwelling, beautifully situated; and the magnificent woods at the back, and grand view in front, would make the most unartistic building picturesque in appearance if not in reality.
Miss Gwynne ran up the broad stairs, through the large hall, and into a good library. Here a very tall, thin, sickly-looking man was seated in an easy-chair.
'My dear Freda, I am so thankful you are come!'
'My dear father, how I wish you would not send for me the very moment I go out. I really cannot be pestered with servants. It fidgets me to death to have a man walking and puffing after me.'
'But just consider, my love, the lateness of the hour.'
'It is scarcely eight o'clock now, papa, and as light as possible.'
'I am too nervous, my love, to bear your being out alone.'