Page:Francesca Carrara 2.pdf/124

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"Myself and an only sister were left orphans at an early age. My father fell lighting by Lord Avonleigh's side, whose life he saved in the low countries. My mother was the nurse of his two children; and, as both were destined to perish in the service of that noble house, she died of a cold caught while watching the sickness of their infant heir. We were adopted into the family; and from that seeming prosperity may I date the evils of my after-life. Alas! we were in a place, not of it.

"There are whole races marked out as the victims of a blind and terrible fatality; and circumstances, over which they themselves have no control, work out, unshunned and unsought, the wrong whereof they perish. The annals of many an ancient race testily to this truth; and so, were they but known, would those of a humbler lot, for Fate, the dark and the cruel, presses alike on high and low.

"I remember once, when as children we were playing together in the castle plaisaunce, a gipsy told us of our future. She mistook us for those of equal station; but she shook her head when my sister and myself held out our childish hands.