things must have some memory.

Then the pictures of as far back as she could remember came to her, and
she saw again their poor lodgings in the cheap foreign towns and their
often scanty fare. And with a fresh burst of love and pride in him, she
remembered her father's invariable cheerfulness--cheerfulness and
gayety--in such poverty! And after he had been used to--this! For all
the descriptions of Captain Fitzgerald had given her no idea of the
reality.

Now she knew what love meant, and could realize her mother's story. Oh,
she would have acted just in the same way, too.

Dominic had been forgiven by his brother after his first wife's death,
and had come back to enjoy a short spell of peace and prosperity. And
who could wonder that Lady Minnie Borringdon, in her first season, and
full of romance, should fall headlong in love with his wonderfully
handsome face, and be only too ready to run off with him from an angry
and unreasonable parent! She was a spoiled and only child who had never
been crossed. Then came that fatal Derby, and the final extinction of
all sympathy with the scapegrace. The Fitzgeralds had done enough for
him already, and Lord Borringdon had no intention of doing anything at
all, so the married lovers crept away in high disgrace, and spent a few
months of bliss in a southern town, where the sun shone and the food was
cheap, and there poor, pretty Minnie died, leaving Theodora a few hours
old.

And now at Beechleigh Theodora looked out of her window on the north
side--the southern rooms were kept for greater than she--and from there
she could see a vast stretch of park, with the deer cropping the fine
turf, and the lions frowning while they supported the ducal coronet over
the great gates at the end of the court-yard and colonnade.

It was truly a splendid inheritance, and she glowed with pride to think
she was of this house.

So she wrote a long letter to her dear ones--her sisters at Dieppe, and
papa, still in Paris, and even one to Mrs. McBride. And then she read
until her maid came to dress her for dinner.

Her room was a large one, and numberless modern touches of comfort
brought up-to-date the early Georgian furniture and the shabby silk
hangings. A room stamped with that something which the most luxurious
apartments of the wealthiest millionaire can never acquire.

Josiah looked in upon her as she finished dressing. He was, he said,
most pleased with everything, and if they were a lit