"Mamma, I hate the word marriage!" she said, with far more than her usual vehemence.
"We will drop the question at present," said her mother, anxiously. "You are looking very pale and ill. This long ride has been too much. I wish I had not permitted it."
Yes, Lady Estelle was the worse for her visit. She looked paler each day, and often when alone she whispered:
"Faithless and debonair—faithless and fair; faithless and debonair!"
The duke soon concluded that he must begin his wanderings again in search of health and strength for his idolized only child. The suitors were sent sway, the castle was closed, and the family of Downsbury went far from Brackenside and little Doris.
CHAPTER VII.
ALL, ALL IS VANITY.
Meanwhile, at the farm little Doris grew under the protection of Mark and Patty, and yearly, as the day came round which was the anniversary of her arrival, Mark received a hundred pounds, in golden sovereigns, or in fresh, new Bank of England notes. And Mark, in his sturdy honesty, and far-seeing common sense, developed rare qualities as a guardian. Plain man as he was, he guessed at what a girl of good family or high social position should know, and preparing Doris for that position to which some day her unknown mother might call her, he resolved that she should receive accomplishments.
Fortune favored him. In Brakebury lived a Frenchman, a political exile, a gentleman of high accomplishments. Monsieur D'Anvers was held in great awe in the village; his courtly grace, the foreign tongues he spoke, the pictures that he drew, the water-color landscapes which he painted and sold in London, his playing on various instruments—all lifted him far above his neighbors.
To Monsieur D'Anvers went honest Mark, when Doris was eight years old, and offered him fifty pounds a year to tutor the two little girls, the brown and the fair.