The manor had been in the possession of the same family from the time of

King James the First, who made a grant of the land to Reginald Berners,

the first Lord of the Manor.

Bertram Berners was the seventh in descent from Reginald. He married

first a lady of high rank, the daughter of the colonial governor of

Virginia. This union, which was neither fruitful nor happy, lasted more

than thirty years, after which the high-born wife died.

Finding himself at the age of sixty a childless widower and the last of

his name, he resolved to marry again in the hope of having heirs. He

chose for his second wife a young lady of good but impoverished family,

the orphan niece of a neighboring planter.

But the new wife only half fulfilled her husband's hopes, when, a year

after their marriage, she presented him with one fair daughter, the

Sybil of our story.

Even this gift cost the delicate mother her life; for although she did

not die immediately, yet from the day of Sybil's birth, she fell into a

long and lingering decline which finally terminated in death.

Old Bertram Berners was nearly seventy years of age, when he laid his

young wife in her early grave. Although he had been grievously

disappointed in his hopes of a male heir, yet he was not mad enough, at

his advanced period of life, to try matrimony again. He wisely

determined to devote the few remaining days of his life to the rearing

of his little daughter, then a child seven years of age.

Old Bertram loved and spoiled the infant as none but an old man can

love or spoil his only child, who is besides the offspring of his age.

He would not part with her to send her to school; but he himself became

her instructor until she was more than ten years old.

After that, as she began to approach womanhood, he engaged a succession

of governesses, each one of whom excessively annoyed him by persistently

trying to marry him for his money, and who consequently got herself

politely dismissed.

Next he tried a succession of tutors, but this second plan worked even

worse than the first; for each one of the tutors in his turn tried to

marry the heiress for the fortune, and, naturally enough, got himself

kicked out of the house.

So the plan of home education prospered badly. Perhaps old Bertram had

been singularly unfortunate in his selection of teachers. It must have

been so indeed, since he had been accustomed to say that "they all were

as bad as they could be; and each one was worse than all the rest."




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024