Lady Hester; Or, Ursula's Narrative

any reports of our strange family history should come dow

were so happy then. Nay, Jaquetta laughs, and declares that it is not possible to be happier than w

e old home, the worst troubles that rise before me are those of the back-board and the st

re benignant star. Nobody could have put a

ss Simmonds most carefully ruled not only over us, but over Adela Brainerd, my fath

as it seemed, neither of them could take to the notion. She was a dear little thing, to be sure, and we were all very fond of her; b

ada, and that was the real cause of it all

farm with a good well-built house, named Sault St. Pierre, all looking prosperous and comfortable, and a young farmer, American

pleasant; and Joel Lea called his wife, a handsome, fair young woman. Bertram says from the first she put him in mind of some one, and he was trying to make out who it could be. Then came

t she kept on looking at Bertram, and she quite started when she heard him called Mr. Trevor. When they were just rising

eman I once knew. Was any rel

in Canada," a

evor I knew was killed in the Lake Campaign in 1814. It mus

aptain in the -th, and had been stationed at York (as Toronto was then called

moment, if there could have been any old attachment between them, and he explained how my father was shipped off from Engl

m would speak when he saw that she was anxious and pained; and she took hold of his hand and held him, and when he said something of mentioning that he had seen her, she cried out with a sort of terror, "Oh no, no, Mr. Trevo

not a great letter writer, and, besides, he thought my father might not wish

air and burst out crying, and as they came and asked who or what this was, she sobbed out, "Your brother Hester! Oh! so like him-my husband!" o

e to her, and ended by marrying her-with the knowledge of her family and his brother officers, but not of his family-just before he was ordered to the Lake frontier. The war had stirred up the Indians

t everyone belonging to her was, she believed, destroyed, and she was carried away by the tribe, who wanted to make her one

he found that there was a white woman living as a captive among them, he spared no effort to rescue her. Both he and she were often in ex

e officers killed in their attack. Dayman was devoted to her, and insisted on marrying her, and bringing up her daughter as his own. I fancy she was a woman of gentle passive temper, and had been crushed and terrified by all she had gone

tory; but Hester remained the only daughter, and they educated her well, sending her to a convent at Montreal, where

ut he had lived a wild sportsman's life, and never was happy at rest. They changed home often; an

ome land on the Canadian side of the border, and her mother came home to live with t

lse to call her), that Fulk Torwood Trevor, the husband of her youth, was not dea

f for herself; and consideration, too, for the sons, for whom the discovery was only less bad than for us, as they

e only child of her father who had any legal claim to his estates. Lea, with a good deal of the old American Republican temper, would not be stirred up. He despised lords and ladies, and would none of it; but the lawyer held that it would be doing wrong not to preserve the record. Hester had grown excited, and seconded him; and one day, when Lea was out, the lawyer brought a magistrate to take

uary, 1836, that she died; and in the course of the summer

to a strong and fixed purpose, and insisted upon making all known to her father. Now that her mother was gon

, and there were no means forthcoming either of coming to England to present herself. The family were well to do, but had no ready money to lay out on a passage across the Atlantic. Nor would Hester wait. She had persuaded

ut, and talk her into a further state of excitement about her child's expectations, and the injuries she was suffering. It was her one idea. She says she really believes she should have gone mad if the saving had not occupied her; and a very dreary life poor Joel must have had whilst she was scraping together the passage-money. He still steadily and sternly disapproved the whole, and when at two years' end she