In spite of a dress at once slatternly and economical, she has still the air of a lady,--rather too much so, the hard duties of her situation considered.

She is proud of the antiquity of her family on both sides; her mother was of the venerable stock of the Daudlers of Daudle Place, a race that existed before the Conquest.

Indeed, one has only to read our earliest chronicles, and to glance over some of those long-winded moralizing poems which delighted the thanes and ealdermen of old, in order to see that the Daudles must have been a very influential family before William the First turned the country topsy-turvy.

While the mother's race was thus indubitably Saxon, the father's had not only the name but the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the Normans, and went far to establish that crotchet of the brilliant author of "Sybil; or, The Two Nations," as to the continued distinction between the conquering and conquered populations.

Mrs.Leslie's father boasted the name of Montfichet,--doubtless of the same kith and kin as those great barons of Alontfichet, who once owned such broad lands and such turbulent castles.
A high-nosed, thin, nervous, excitable progeny, those same Montfydgets, as the most troublesome Norman could pretend to be.