who, she was told, was her mother, had become a dim
memory of early girlhood. Who the great lady was, and who was her
father, she did not know. This knowledge the nuns, in their wisdom, kept
from her--if, indeed, they knew themselves.

One day, in 1761, her days of childish happiness came to an abrupt and
sensational end. A rough seafaring man called at the convent with a
letter from her father demanding the return of his daughter. The bearer
was sent by the captain of a merchant-vessel, who had instructions to
convey the girl from Rouen to Leith; and, after an affecting farewell to
the abbess and nuns, who had been so kind to her, Susan Janet Emilia
(for that was the girl's name) started with her strange escort on the
long journey to a parent whom she had never consciously seen. The
father, released by the death of the Countess, had married a second wife
of his own station, and had settled as a livery-stable keeper at Leith,
where, with his rapidly-growing family, he had now made his home for
some years.

At last Emilia was handed over to the custody of her groom-father, who
conducted her to his home, which, as may be imagined, was a pitiful and
sordid exchange for the peace and happiness of her convent life. From
the first day the new life was impossible. Emilia was treated by her
stepmother with coarseness and brutality; she was daily taunted with her
dependent position, and shown in a hundred ways that her presence was
unwelcome.

Can one wonder that the proud spirit of the girl rebelled against such
ignominy? It was better far to trust to the mercy of the world than to
bear the brutal treatment of her low-born stepmother. And thus it came
to pass that, early one morning, before the household was awake, Emilia
slipped stealthily away with a few shillings, all her worldly
possessions, in her pocket. Walking a few miles along the shore, she
took the packet-boat, and crossed to the Fife coast, thus placing a
broad arm of the sea between herself and the house of misery and
oppression she had left for ever.

For days this descendant of Scotland's proudest nobles tramped aimlessly
through the country, sleeping in barns or craving the shelter of the
humblest cottage, and, when her money was exhausted, even begging her
bread from door to door.

At last human nature reached its limit. Late one night, footsore and
fainting from exhaustion and hunger, she presented herself at a remote
farmhouse, and begged piteously for