There was one in Mr. Grey’s family to whom he was so attached that he would, to oblige her, have thrown over the whole Carroll family; but of this that one person would not hear.  She hated the whole Carroll family with an almost unholy hatred, of which she herself was endeavoring to repent daily, but in vain.  She could not do other than hate them, but she could do other than allow her father to withdraw his fostering protection; for this one person was Mr. Grey’s only daughter and his one close domestic associate.  Miss Dorothy Grey was known well to all the neighborhood, and was both feared and revered.  As we shall have much to do with her in the telling of our story, it may be well to make her stand plainly before the reader’s eyes.

In the first place, it must be understood that she was motherless, brotherless and sisterless.  She had been Mr. Grey’s only child, and her mother had been dead for fifteen or sixteen years.  She was now about thirty years of age, but was generally regarded as ranging somewhere between forty and fifty.  “If she isn’t nearer fifty than forty I’ll eat my old shoes,” said a lady in the neighborhood to a gentleman.  “I’ve known her these twenty years, and she’s not altered in the least.”  As Dolly Grey had been only ten twenty years ago, the lady must have been wrong.  But it is singular how a person’s memory of things may be created out of their present appearances.  Dorothy herself had apparently no desire to set right this erroneous opinion which the neighborhood entertained respecting her.  She did not seem to care whether she was supposed to be thirty, or forty, or fifty.  Of youth, as a means of getting lovers, she entertained a profound contempt.  That no lover would ever come she was assured, and would not at all have known what to do with one had he come.  The only man for whom she had ever felt the slightest regard was her father.  For some women about she did entertain a passionless, well-regulated affection, but they were generally the poor, the afflicted, or the aged.  It was, however, always necessary that the person so signalized should be submissive.  Now, Mrs. Carroll, Mr. Grey’s sister, had long since shown that she was not submissive enough, nor were the girls, the eldest of whom was a pert, ugly, well-grown minx, now about eighteen years old.  The second sister, who was seventeen, was supposed to be a beauty, but which of the two was the more odious in the eyes of their cousin it would be impossible to say.

Miss Dorothy Grey was Dolly only to her father.  Had any one else so ventured to call her she would have started up at once, the outraged aged female of fifty.  Even her aunt, who was trouble enough to her, felt that it could not be so.  Her uncle tried it once, and she declined to come into his presence for a month, letting it be fully understood that she had been insulted.