ought these words out with such an effort, such difficulty, that
the tears came to my eyes, and I whispered, "Don't go on, mother
darling, if it hurts you." She continued, however, without appearing to
notice my interruption.

"I ran wild till I was twelve or thirteen years of age, I had no society
but my father's and the servants', and I got no regular education. He
would not send me to school, but the vicar's daughter came over for an
hour or two every day to teach me what I could be induced to learn,
which was little enough. I was hot-tempered, headstrong, self-willed,
accustomed to fight for what I wanted, getting nothing by any other
means, and doing without what I could not get in that way. No softening,
no refining influence came into my life. My one pleasure even then was
music. I had a passion for it. Miss Vincent, the vicar's daughter,
taught me to play the piano, and I used to spend hours in the deserted
drawing-room, playing what I knew, and picking out tunes by myself,
while my father was shut up in his study. We had no near relation, no
one who cared enough to take pity on an unruly, troublesome, little
girl, with a drunken father. When I was between twelve and thirteen he
died, and a godmother who lived in Scotland took charge of me, and sent
me to a boarding-school, at which I spent the next four years. Schools
were not then what they are now, particularly in Scotland, and between
the time spent there and the holidays with Miss Clark, who was a stern,
old maid and a confirmed invalid, my life was very dreary; I was
becoming harder, and harder. I did not know in fact that I had any
feelings; they were not cultivated amongst the people who had to do with
me. She, also, died before I was seventeen, and then something happened
which was to change my whole life. My step-brother, whom I had never
seen, wrote to Miss McDougall, with whom I was at school, saying that my
home would, henceforth, be with him. Your Uncle Tone was my father's son
by his first marriage, and when his father married my mother, Tone went
to live with his maternal grandfather, who, on his death, left him the
beautiful place in Derbyshire to which I was to go. He lived there with
an old aunt. This news affected me very little; I had never had a happy
home, a real home; I did not know what that was, but I presumed I should
go somewhere on leaving school.

"My love of music had, in the meantime, increased. I had had a very good
master, a re