My
father is a baronet- one of the smaller lords, by knight
service*(8)- Sir Richard Hendon, of Hendon Hall, by Monk's Holm in
Kent.'
'The name has escaped my memory. Go on- tell me thy story.'
''Tis not much, your majesty, yet perchance it may beguile a short
half-hour for want of a better. My father, Sir Richard, is very
rich, and of a most generous nature. My mother died whilst I was yet a
boy. I have two brothers: Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his
father's; and Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous,
treacherous, vicious, underhanded- a reptile. Such was he from the
cradle; such was he ten years past, when I last saw him- a ripe rascal
at nineteen, I being twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two. There is none
other of us but the Lady Edith, my cousin- she was sixteen, then-
beautiful, gentle, good, the daughter of an earl, the last of her
race, heiress of a great fortune and a lapsed title. My father was her
guardian. I loved her and she loved me; but she was betrothed to
Arthur from the cradle, and Sir Richard would not suffer the
contract to be broken. Arthur loved another maid, and bade us be of
good cheer and hold fast to the hope that delay and luck together
would some day give success to our several causes. Hugh loved the Lady
Edith's fortune, though in truth he said it was herself he loved-
but then 'twas his way, alway, to say one thing and mean the other.
But he lost his arts upon the girl; he could deceive my father, but
none else.
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