A beautiful, gay, high-spirited girl, who had all the Ethalwood spirit with its attendant pride. Her father literally worshipped her; he watched her beauty as it developed day by day; he pleased himself by fondly imagining what a glorious future was before her.
He could not bear to part with her, and would not upon any consideration be persuaded to send her from home.
He had governesses and masters for her—he did his best to ensure her a good education at home, but it was, perhaps, the most imprudent thing he could possibly do. He made no allowance for girlish gaiety or exuberance of spirits, and the result of this was that the girl began to look upon her home as a sort of prison.
She loved her father, had the greatest respect for his character, but still at the same time she looked upon him as a sort of gaoler, and gloried in evading his rules.
Her brothers she did not see a very great deal of. They spent very little time at Broxbridge Hall; they went to Eton and from thence to Oxford, and were principally under the charge of tutors.
Lord Ethalwood had impressed upon them in a most marked manner the nobility of their race and the obligation they were under to keep their name unsullied and honour unstained; he left the rest to their teachers.
The name of Lady Ethalwood no one in the household durst mention; his lordship had given orders to that effect. Even his sons and daughter never once alluded to their dead mother.
Whatever they knew or had heard about her they had the prudence to keep to themselves.
The years flew by and the Honourable Miss Ethalwood was approaching her eighteenth summer, and her father was looking forward to the time when she would be presented at Court and take her place among the ladies of the fashionable world.
He almost dreaded this ordeal, for he felt that she would, as a natural consequence, become hurried on into a vortex of pleasure, and be constrained to keep up an incessant round of visits; but a greater evil, a more serious estrangement, was destined to take place before the dreaded time arrived.