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CHAPTER XVII.
"With that she struck her on the lips,
So died double red;
Hard was the heart that gave the blow—
Sweet were the lips that bled."
Ballad of Fair Rosamunde.
"It is well you have returned home to dinner," exclaimed Albert, as he caught sight of his father in the avenue, and ran forwards to meet him, "or I must have starved; since eating before my curiosity is satisfied is quite out of the question. You have been the whole morning at Lawrence Aylmer's, and I hear that he has had for months past the most beautiful stranger residing under his roof. Like the wandering princess of an old romance, no one knows who she is, or where she came from, only that she arrived with a brother to whom she was devotedly attached, but who died a few months after their landing. Now, my dear father, do give me a full and particular account of this mysterious beauty. They say that she is evidently noble—surely she is not going to live for ever at the farm?"
