"No, no, not exactly; but talking of handsome men, the Earl is a good-looking fellow if you like it, and his sisters were quite the belles in town last season. The Prince Regent swears there is nothing like them. Are they to remain long North, Mr. Ravensworth?"
"It doesn't say, but I fancy they will stay over Christmas. But I shall be late—is the tea ready, Ellen?—let us sit down, and we can talk about them as we drive in to Edinburgh."
"Look, papa, how it snows," said Maude; "we shall have a cold drive; isn't it early for snow in November?"
"Yes, love, but eat your breakfast, and talk after."
Leaving them to do justice to their capital Scotch breakfast, we take this opportunity of making our readers better acquainted with the Ravensworth family.
Mr. Ravensworth was a tall, gentlemanly-looking man of about fifty; much anxiety had prematurely whitened his hair, and sorrow ploughed the lines deep in his brow with her "burning share." He had been born to large property, but had suddenly lost his fortune, and almost immediately afterwards his partner in life, leaving him to contend against poverty at his very door with four infant children, of whom the eldest was barely seven and the youngest an infant in arms. Mr. Ravensworth then entered the Bar, and being an uncommonly clever, and, what was more, a working man, soon began to rise in his profession, and was able to build and furnish a pretty villa on the seashore, some miles from Edinburgh, where he practised, and to educate his children well and live at least in comfort. As he had prospects too, being next heir to a fine property in Haddington, he was not without hopes of being able to raise his family to the position they had formerly occupied in society, and see his house once more on the top of the fickle wheel that had crushed him so low. He did not spend his time in unavailing lament over parted grandeur, but strove by hard and steady labour to launch on the tide, "that, taken at its height, leads on to fortune." His eldest son George entered the army when only seventeen, and was rapidly rising in his profession, when again the hand of death snatched another victim, and the father's hopes seemed once more shattered. Still beaten down, but not conquered, he lived and laboured for his family. Ellen, now his eldest child, was a remarkably fine-looking girl; she was much above the average height, and built on a large scale, with a commanding look, and seemed born, as her flatterers told her, to be a duchess. Nature had given her a lavish abundance of fair brown hair, which, confined by the frail net that scarcely held its prisoner, rolled half way down her back and contrasted sadly with the garb of woe she still wore for her soldier brother. Her blue eyes were full of soul and expression. It has been said that when a Scotch girl is pretty she is something quite unusual, and if ever there was a perfect beauty it was Ellen; whatever you looked on was matchless, whether it was her eyes beaming like the mirror of an innocent heart—or her white Grecian nose—pearly teeth—or again the well-developed contour of her form—her round white arm or well-turned and small foot and ankle. Each was perfect—nothing that we could have wished altered. Her still face perhaps gave her the appearance of being a year or two older than she really was, a fault—if we may so call it—not uncommon with Scotch beauties; but the moment she opened her lips, or smiled, the illusion vanished. Johnny, as her younger, and now only, brother used to be always called, was an open-faced, good-looking boy of fifteen, and promised to grow up like his father. Of Maude we need only say with Lord Byron, she was—
"A lovely being, hardly formed or moulded,
A rose, with all its brightest leaves yet folded."
The village in which they resided was situated some few miles from the modern Athens. Seaview, as its name implied, faced the sea, and was one of many similar villas that had sprung up around them since Mr. Ravensworth had fixed on it as a residence, in order that his children might have the benefit of country and sea air, and yet be sufficiently near the northern metropolis to enable him to pursue his vocation, and give them the education of which Edinburgh afforded such first-rate means.
Seaview was enclosed in a small garden with a lawn running down in front to the terrace that overlooked the sands. From the front windows they had a fine view of the Firth of Forth—the Fife hills opposite to the right, the large bay bounded by Berwick Law and Bass amid the waters, and to the left the upper course of the Forth. The dining-room and hall door, which were at the back, looked out on the champaign country stretched between the Pentlands and Lammermoors. Arthur's Seat rose like an island from its sea of woods, or, more fancifully still, like a lion couched among the brushwood. A broad carriage road running to London one way, and Edinburgh the other, passed their door.
Mr. Ravensworth kept a four-wheel and one horse, in which he every day drove to Edinburgh, leaving Johnny and Maude at their respective schools, and, after his day's attendance at the Parliament houses, calling for them again on his way home. Accordingly, breakfast finished, he and his two children started for Town, as they called Edinburgh, leaving Ellen and L'Estrange to amuse themselves as they best could.