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soirees, her mother and Roselle had pointed him out two years before when he had come back on leave at the death of his father. And now he had returned to stay. It was rumored that his mother had not long to live. He would stay and take care of the estate, they said. He had spent more years at war than anyone expected the son of an earl to do.
    Lady Berrington died a few days after Lord Berrington returned from war, but this too, the Presleighs heard only as gossip carried to them by neighbors or friends. He was now twenty-four years old and sole heir to a vast fortune and guardian to his young stepsister. Belinda saw him now and then, at church or in the village, but he never looked her way. She, on the other hand, glanced guardedly at him whenever she had the chance.

    * * * * *

    One afternoon, coming back into the house through the back part, Belinda heard her mother and aunt talking about her and she stopped in her tracks. The door to the back sitting room where her mother and aunt often sat to sew and to have their tea was ajar.
    "Poor Belinda, she will never be even passably pretty," said her mother, her voice nervous. "She hasn't even a hundredth part of the beauty that my darling Roselle had."
    "Belinda is young still," her aunt had said kindly, "there may yet be…"
    "No." her mother had said with hurtful finality. "Dear Jenny, are you blind? There is nothing in Belinda that can ever 'develop'". What is there is there. What you see is what there is and  all  there is."
    "Surely her eyes…" Aunt Jenny insisted. "She has very unusual eyes."
    "Nothing at all," her mother insisted. "Do recall her pitiful face, dear—thin and angular to the point of the grotesque. She is tall and ungainly and moves with not the slightest grace. Oh, and her  hair. My dear, there is nothing to be done with hair that is as thick as a horse's tail. It cannot be curled and is best left tied back and out of the way. You cannot imagine how I have struggled with it. Such a contrast to Roselle's angelic golden tresses."
    "Belinda is still very young," Aunt Jenny insisted.
    "Young yes, she'll be fifteen come next spring, and a less promising prospect for a London Season I have never before seen. Do you recall Caroline Sethly-Baring?"
    "The pimply girl with the lank hair and droopy chin, daughter of Baronet DePauling?” asked Aunt Jenny, "yes—what of her? She married at least. Though one cannot name as a conquest Ronald Sethly-Baring. He is with the Regiment in India, is he not?"
    "Yes. They are both out there now," said Mrs. Presleigh, and now added, "I would call Caroline pretty compared to Belinda."
    "Surely you exaggerate," said Aunt Jenny. "Belinda's face at least has character, the comparison is unkind."
    Belinda retreated the way she had come, making sure she made no noise and once reaching the back door ran out once again to the woods, the only place to hide after the sentence she had just received. She had always suspected she was not pretty, but now her mother's words had congealed it in her mind like nothing else had. She was homely, and she would always be that. Her mother's words rang in her mind over and over—loudly, stridently and ruthlessly.
    She said out loud that she hated her mother and then quickly asked God to forgive her for having said it. Then she wept for two hours in loud gulps heard only by the birds and squirrels, and then with swollen eyes she crept back to the house and up to her room. She would say she was sick and not come down to dinner. They would see her red, swollen eyes and think she had caught something. Maybe she could die like Roselle.
    And she had thought that some day she would start getting prettier, as she got older, and Richard Berrington would finally start noticing her. The death of this hope was the most violent, like the death of a newborn chick torn between the talons of a hawk.

Chapter 4

    "Stop fidgeting, Belinda", said Mrs. Presleigh, "and let Minnie do your braid or we will be late for