By no means a perfect woman, though endowed with woman’s sweetest virtues; she was inclined to be willful, with a delicious grace that no one could resist. She liked to have her own way, and generally managed it in the end. She delighted rather too much in this will of her own. She owned to herself, with meek, pretty contrition, that she was often inclined to be passionate, that she was impatient of control, too much inclined to speak her mind with a certain freedom that was not always prudent.
Yet the worst of Lady Hermione’s faults was that they compelled you to love her, and even to love them, they were so full of charms. When she was quite a little child Lord Lorriston was accustomed to say that the prettiest sight in all the world was Hermione in a passion.
She was completely spoiled by her father, but, fortunately, Lady Lorriston was gifted with some degree of common sense, and exerted a wholesome control over the pet of the household.
The earl’s son and heir, Clement Dane Lorriston, was at college, and Lady Hermione, having no sister of her own, was warmly attached to Clarice Severn.
There were several other families—the Thrings of Thurston, the Gordons of Leyton, and, as may be imagined, with so many young people, there was no inconsiderable amount of love-making and marriage.
Sir Ronald Alden was, without exception, the most popular man in the neighborhood. The late Lord of Aldenmere had never married; to save himself all trouble he adopted his nephew, Ronald, and brought him up as his heir; so that when his time came to reign he was among those with whom he had lived all his life.
He was very handsome, this young lord of Alden. The Alden faces were all very much the same; they had a certain weary, half-contemptuous look; but when they softened with tenderness or brightened with smiles, they were simply beautiful and irresistible.
They were of the high-bred, patrician type—the style of face that has come down to us from the cavaliers and crusaders of old. The only way in which Sir Ronald differed from his ancestors was that he had a mouth like one of the old Greek gods—it would of itself have made a woman almost divinely lovely—it made him irresistible. Very seldom does one see anything like it in real life. A smile from it would have melted the coldest heart—a harsh word have pierced the heart of one who loved him.
He had something of the spirit that distinguished the crusaders; he was brave even to recklessness—he never studied danger; he was proud, stubborn, passionate. A family failing of the Aldens was a sudden impulse of anger that often led them to words they repented of.
So that he was by no means perfect, this young lord of Alden; but it is to be imagined that many people liked him all the better for that.