As it was, her poor weak darlings were carried about from London to Brighton, from Brighton to some German baths, from the German baths back to Torquay, and thence—­as regarded the four we have named—­to that bourne from whence no further journey could be made under Lady Arabella’s directions.

The one son and heir to Greshamsbury was named as his father, Francis Newbold Gresham.  He would have been the hero of our tale had not that place been pre-occupied by the village doctor.  As it is, those who please may regard him.  It is he who is to be our favourite young man, to do the love scenes, to have his trials and his difficulties, and to win through them or not, as the case may be.  I am too old now to be a hard-hearted author, and so it is probable that he may not die of a broken heart.  Those who don’t approve of a middle-aged bachelor country doctor as a hero, may take the heir to Greshamsbury in his stead, and call the book, if it so please them, ’The Loves and Adventures of Francis Newbold Gresham the Younger.’

And Master Frank Gresham was not ill adapted for playing the part of a hero of this sort.  He did not share his sisters’ ill-health, and though the only boy of the family, he excelled all his sisters in personal appearance.  The Greshams from time immemorial had been handsome.  They were broad browed, blue-eyed, fair haired, born with dimples in their chins, and that pleasant, aristocratic dangerous curl of the upper lip which can equally express good humour or scorn.  Young Frank was every inch a Gresham, and was the darling of his father’s heart.

The De Courcys had never been plain.  There was too much hauteur, too much pride, we may perhaps even fairly say, too much nobility in their gait and manners, and even in their faces, to allow of their being considered plain; but they were not a race nurtured by Venus or Apollo.  They were tall and thin, with high cheek-bones, high foreheads, and large, dignified, cold eyes.  The De Courcy girls all had good hair; and, as they also possessed easy manners and powers of talking, they managed to pass in the world for beauties till they were absorbed in the matrimonial market, and the world at large cared no longer whether they were beauties or not.  The Misses Gresham were made in the De Courcy mould, and were not on this account the less dear to their mother.

The two eldest, Augusta and Beatrice, lived, and were apparently likely to live.  The four next faded and died one after another—­all in the same sad year—­and were laid in the neat, new cemetery at Torquay.  Then came a pair, born at one birth, weak, delicate, frail little flowers, with dark hair and dark eyes, and thin, long, pale faces, with long, bony hands, and long bony feet, whom men looked on as fated to follow their sisters with quick steps.  Hitherto, however, they had not followed them, nor had they suffered as their sisters had suffered; and some people at Greshamsbury attributed this to the fact that a change had been made in the family medical practitioner.