The Queen of Hearts | Page 6

at the tips of her delicate fingers. Imagine
such a light-hearted daughter of Eve as this, the spoiled darling of
society, the charming spendthrift of Nature's choicest treasures of
beauty and youth, suddenly flashing into the dim life of three weary old
men--suddenly dropped into the place, of all others, which is least fit
for her--suddenly shut out from the world in the lonely quiet of the
loneliest home in England. Realize, if it be possible, all that is most

whimsical and most anomalous in such a situation as this, and the
startling confession contained in the opening sentence of these pages
will no longer excite the faintest emotion of surprise. Who can wonder
now, when our bright young goddess really descended on us, that I and
my brothers were all three at our wits' end what to do with her!
CHAPTER II.
OUR DILEMMA.
WHO is the young lady? And how did she find her way into The Glen
Tower?
Her name (in relation to which I shall have something more to say a
little further on) is Jessie Yelverton. She is an orphan and an only child.
Her mother died while she was an infant; her father was my dear and
valued friend, Major Yelverton. He lived long enough to celebrate his
darling's seventh birthday. When he died he intrusted his authority over
her and his responsibility toward her to his brother and to me.
When I was summoned to the reading of the major's will, I knew
perfectly well that I should hear myself appointed guardian and
executor with his brother; and I had been also made acquainted with
my lost friend's wishes as to his daughter's education, and with his
intentions as to the disposal of all his property in her favor. My own
idea, therefore, was, that the reading of the will would inform me of
nothing which I had not known in the testator's lifetime. When the day
came for hearing it, however, I found that I had been over hasty in
arriving at this conclusion. Toward the end of the document there was a
clause inserted which took me entirely by surprise.
After providing for the education of Miss Yelverton under the direction
of her guardians, and for her residence, under ordinary circumstances,
with the major's sister, Lady Westwick, the clause concluded by
saddling the child's future inheritance with this curious condition:
From the period of her leaving school to the period of her reaching the
age of twenty-one years, Miss Yelverton was to pass not less than six

consecutive weeks out of every year under the roof of one of her two
guardians. During the lives of both of them, it was left to her own
choice to say which of the two she would prefer to live with. In all
other respects the condition was imperative. If she forfeited it,
excepting, of course, the case of the deaths of both her guardians, she
was only to have a life-interest in the property; if she obeyed it, the
money itself was to become her own possession on the day when she
completed her twenty-first year.
This clause in the will, as I have said, took me at first by surprise. I
remembered how devotedly Lady Westwick had soothed her
sister-in-law's death-bed sufferings, and how tenderly she had
afterward watched over the welfare of the little motherless child--I
remembered the innumerable claims she had established in this way on
her brother's confidence in her affection for his orphan daughter, and I
was, therefore, naturally amazed at the appearance of a condition in his
will which seemed to show a positive distrust of Lady Westwick's
undivided influence over the character and conduct of her niece.
A few words from my fellow-guardian, Mr. Richard Yelverton, and a
little after-consideration of some of my deceased friend's peculiarities
of disposition and feeling, to which I had not hitherto attached
sufficient importance, were enough to make me understand the motives
by which he had been influenced in providing for the future of his
child.
Major Yelverton had raised himself to a position of affluence and
eminence from a very humble origin. He was the son of a small farmer,
and it was his pride never to forget this circumstance, never to be
ashamed of it, and never to allow the prejudices of society to influence
his own settled opinions on social questions in general.
Acting, in all that related to his intercourse with the world, on such
principles as these, the major, it is hardly necessary to say, held some
strangely heterodox opinions on the modern education of girls, and on
the evil influence of society over the characters of women in general.
Out of the strength of those opinions, and out of the certainty of his
conviction that his