“P.S.—­Emsdale’s son, I have just heard—­confound their impudence!—­intends, upon the strength of this accession of property, to stand for the county against my old friend ——­, at the dissolution, which cannot now be far off.  If you don’t think one thousand pounds enough, I’ll double it.  A cruelly, ill-used lady! and as to her son, he’s the very image of the late Sir Harry Compton.  In haste—­J.T.  I re-open the letter to enclose a cheque for a hundred pounds, which you will pay the attorney on account.  They’ll die hard, you may be sure.  If it could come off next assizes, we should spoil them for the county—­J.T.”

“Assizes”—­“county”—­“Sir Harry Compton,” I involuntarily murmured, as I finished the perusal of my old friend’s incoherent epistle.  “What on earth can the eccentric old fox-hunter mean?” “Show the lady in,” I added in a louder tone to the clerk.  She presently appeared, accompanied by a remarkably handsome boy about six years of age, both attired in deep mourning.  The lady approached with a timid, furtive step and glance, as if she were entering the den of some grim ogre, rather than the quiet study of a civilized lawyer of mature age.  I was at once struck by her singular and touching loveliness.  I have never seen a woman that so completely realized the highest Madonna type of youthful, matronly beauty—­its starlight radiance and mild serenity of sorrow.  Her voice, too, gentle and low, had a tone of patient sadness in it strangely affecting.  She was evidently a person, if not of high birth, of refined manners and cultivated mind; and I soon ceased to wonder at warm-hearted old Sir Jasper’s enthusiasm in her cause.  Habitually, however, on my guard against first impressions, I courteously, but coldly, invited her first to a seat, and next to a more intelligible relation of her business with me than could be gathered from the letter of which she was the bearer.  She complied, and I was soon in possession of the following facts and fancies:—­

Violet Dalston and her sister Emily had lived for several years in close and somewhat straitened retirement with their father, Captain Dalston, at Rock Cottage, on the outskirts of a village about six miles distant from Leeds, when Captain Dalston, who was an enthusiastic angler, introduced to his home a gentleman about twenty-five years of age, of handsome exterior and gentlemanly manners, with whom congeniality of tastes and pursuits had made him acquainted.  This stranger was introduced to Violet (my interesting client) and her sister, as a Mr. Henry Grainger, the son of a London merchant.  The object of his wanderings through the English counties was, he said, to recruit his health, which had become affected by too close application to business, and to gratify his taste for angling, sketching, and so on.  He became a frequent visitor; and the result, after the lapse of about three months, was a proposal for the hand of Violet.  His father allowed him, he stated, five hundred pounds per annum; but in order