The young men had a fair cousin by marriage, a Mrs. Margaret Lovell, a widow.  At seventeen she had gone with her husband to India, where Harry Lovell encountered the sword of a Sikh Sirdar, and tried the last of his much-vaunted swordsmanship, which, with his skill at the pistols, had served him better in two antecedent duels, for the vindication of his lovely and terrible young wife.  He perished on the field, critically admiring the stroke to which he owed his death.  A week after Harry’s burial his widow was asked in marriage by his colonel.  Captains, and a giddy subaltern likewise, disputed claims to possess her.  She, however, decided to arrest further bloodshed by quitting the regiment.  She always said that she left India to save her complexion; “and people don’t know how very candid I am,” she added, for the colonel above-mentioned was wealthy,—­a man expectant of a title, and a good match, and she was laughed at when she thus assigned trivial reasons for momentous resolutions.  It is a luxury to be candid; and perfect candour can do more for us than a dark disguise.

Mrs. Lovell’s complexion was worth saving from the ravages of an Indian climate, and the persecution of claimants to her hand.  She was golden and white, like an autumnal birch-tree—­yellow hair, with warm-toned streaks in it, shading a fabulously fair skin.  Then, too, she was tall, of a nervous build, supple and proud in motion, a brilliant horsewoman, and a most distinguished sitter in an easy drawing-room chair, which is, let me impress upon you, no mean quality.  After riding out for hours with a sweet comrade, who has thrown the mantle of dignity half-way off her shoulders, it is perplexing, and mixed strangely of humiliation and ecstasy, to come upon her clouded majesty where she reclines as upon rose-hued clouds, in a mystic circle of restriction (she who laughed at your jokes, and capped them, two hours ago) a queen.

Between Margaret Lovell and Edward there was a misunderstanding, of which no one knew the nature, for they spoke in public very respectfully one of the other.  It had been supposed that they were lovers once; but when lovers quarrel, they snarl, they bite, they worry; their eyes are indeed unveiled, and their mouths unmuzzled.  Now Margaret said of Edward:  “He is sure to rise; he has such good principles.”  Edward said of Margaret:  “She only wants a husband who will keep her well in hand.”  These sentences scarcely carried actual compliments when you knew the speakers; but outraged lovers cannot talk in that style after they have broken apart.  It is possible that Margaret and Edward conveyed to one another as sharp a sting as envenomed lovers attempt.  Gossip had once betrothed them, but was now at fault.  The lady had a small jointure, and lived partly with her uncle, Lord Elling, partly with Squire Blancove, her aunt’s husband, and a little by herself, which was when she counted money in her purse, and chose to assert her independence.  She had a name