I was glad you had not my black eyes and gypsy skin.
I think I loved you all the more because you were your father's image.
"Ah, Mollie, I never can tell you what a blessed, peaceful household
we were until you were three months old! Then the first change took
place--Stephen Dane got married.
"At Wortley Manor, just without the confines of Steeple Hill, lived Sir
John Wortley and his lady. They had come to spend the hot months down in
the country, and my lady had brought with her a London lady's-maid, full
of London airs and graces, styles and fashions. She was a pretty girl,
this buxom Mary Linton, with flaxen curls, and light blue eyes, and a
skin white as milk and soft as satin. She could sing like an angel, and
dance like a fairy, and dress and talk like my lady herself.
"Of course, before she had been a month in the place, she had turned the
heads of all the young fellows in the village, Stephen Dane's among the
rest. But while she coquetted with all, she smiled most sweetly on
Stephen, with his three hundred pounds laid by in bank, his broad
shoulders, his lofty stature and his hearty looks.
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