She had been well educated and delicately reared in the lap of wealth and luxury. She was an old man's only child, and her father considered there was nothing on earth too good for her. When the girl was about sixteen, her father was in the heyday of success in life. A speculator he was, and lived in a beautiful house on the Borders, and on the banks of the winding Tweed. He was very much looked up to, as wealthy men generally are, simply because they are wealthy. But to have seen Mr. Noble's house and grounds, his retinue of servants and his carriages and horses, would have caused you to think, as everybody else thought, "Here is a man that can never be moved."
At this time, or soon after, he had a winter establishment in Edinburgh, and used to give as good parties as any lord in the city; and Euphemia—his daughter, and she had no mother—used to be the presiding goddess. She was very beautiful; she is beautiful even as we know her now, though poverty and want have hollowed her cheeks, and given a lustre to her dark eyes that her good neighbours on the stair say is hardly "canny."
Euphemia, when only seventeen, had several suitors for her hand, and might have made what is called a very good match. But there was one she cared for above them all. He was a dashing young officer of a Highland regiment at that time stationed in the Castle.
The two became engaged.
Lieutenant Mackenzie was of very good family, and would one day be wealthy; only just at that time he had nothing but his pay, his prospects, and the allowance his mother made him. He couldn't afford to marry for some time. What did that matter? they were both young, and could wait.
So away went the gallant 93rd to India, and with it went Lieutenant Donald Mackenzie, with hope and love to buoy up his heart.
He had not been away a year before a crisis came, and then a crash—oh, such a terrible crash! I suppose Mr. Noble had got too daring, or too something or other, in his speculations. I really do not know all the outs and ins of the matter, but I do know that his house and all his property, down even to Euphemia's pet canaries, were sold, and that after this poor Mr. Noble—poor now indeed—had barely enough to pay the passage-money for himself and daughter to America, where, with the help of some friends or distant relatives, he intended to start afresh. Just think of it—an old man of seventy starting life afresh!
Well, the end seemed to have come, indeed, when Euphie's father died. She was a brave Scotch lassie, however, and would not give in; so she wrote to India to Donald—her Donald now no longer—releasing him from his engagement, then she hired herself out as a governess.
Donald's regiment fought in Afghanistan and the borders of India, and he was wounded. He lost his left arm, brave fellow, and was sent home to be invalided, and retired.
A whole year passed away, and Donald lived at his mother's Highland home—Drumglen—an estate that had been left entirely to her, to will or to do with it as she pleased. Donald was the only son, and a very great favourite. She, the mother, too, was exceedingly jealous of his attentions to any fair maiden that she did not approve of. In fact, she had her eye upon a lady who would make a capital wife for her son. A little older, it is true. What did that matter, the mother told herself; she would be all the more fitted to advise and guide her son through life. Rather dark and stately, too, she was, not to say forbidding. But she owned broad Highland acres, and moorlands, forests, and glens. The absence of beauty, Donald's mother thought, would be an advantage rather than otherwise, for Donald could not well be jealous of a wife ugly enough to stop the church clock.