“But the ninth one was not like them,” said my Lord.  “The blood of the fierce devils who were the chiefs of her house centuries ago woke in her veins at her birth.  ’Tis strange indeed, Gerald, how such things break forth—­or slumber—­in a race.  Should you trace Wildairs, as you trace Mertoun through the past, her nature would be made clear enough.  They have been splendid devils, some of them—­devils who fought, shrieking with ferocious laughter in the face of certain horrible death; devils whose spirit no torture of rack or flame could conquer; beings who could endure in silence horrors almost supernatural; who could bear more, revel more, suffer more, defy more than any other human thing.”

“And this child is one of them!” said Roxholm.

He said but little as they rode onward and he listened.  There was within him a certain distaste for what seemed to him the unnatural tumult of his feelings.  A girl child of twelve rollicking in boys’ clothes was not a pleasing picture, but in one sense a tragic one, and certainly not such as should set a man’s heart beating and his cheek to flame when he heard stories of her fantastic life and character.  On this occasion he did not understand himself; if he had been a sanctimonious youngster he would have reproved his own seeming levity, but he was not so, and frankly felt himself restless and ill at ease.

The name given to her had been Clorinda, and from her babyhood she had been as tempestuous as her sisters were mild.  None could manage her.  Her baby training left wholly to neglected and loose-living servants, she had spent her first years in kitchens, garrets, and stables.  The stables and the stable-boys, the kennels and their keepers, were loved better than aught else.  She learned to lisp the language of grooms’ and helpers, she cursed and swore as they did, she heard their songs and stories, and was as familiar with profanity and obscene language as other children are with nursery rhymes.  Until she was five years old Sir Jeoffry never set eyes upon her.  Then a strange chance threw her in his way and sealed her fate.

Straying through the house, having escaped from her woman, the child had reached the big hall, and sate upon the floor playing with a powder-flask she had found.  ’Twas Sir Jeoffry’s, and he, coming upon her, not knowing her for his own offspring (not that such a knowledge would have calmed his passion), he sprang upon her with curses and soundly trounced her.  Either of her sisters Anne or Barbara would have been convulsed with terror, but this one was only roused to a fury as much greater for her size than Sir Jeoffry was bigger than herself.  She flew at him and poured forth oaths, she shrieked at him and beat his legs with his own crop, which she caught up from the floor where it lay within reach, she tore at him with tooth and nail, and with such strength and infant fearlessness as arrested him in his frenzy and caused him to burst forth laughing as if he had gone mad.