The three Douglas children, with Vaura Vernon, had been playmates, and
the days spent at Haughton Hall were among their most pleasant
reminiscences. Bright, merry Roland, with courtly Guy Travers, were
favourites of Vaura, each vieing with the other to win her favour,
fighting her battles with biped and quadruped, both boys coming to
love her with the whole strength of manhood, only to eat their hearts
out alone, as others, now in her womanhood, were doing, while Vaura
would tell herself, not without a heart-ache, that, "it grieved her to
say them nay, but she cared for them only in the dance, only in the
sunshine; that in the quieter walks of life, she would long for a
spirit more in kinship with her quieter, her higher nature."
Vaura had spent so much of her life with her uncle and godmother, that
the men they loved to have about them had probably spoilt her taste
for the very young men of to-day. Both she and her godmother, had many
friendships among men, believing the interchange of thought to be
mutually improving. Indeed, in most cases they trusted their
faithfulness, their sincerity, more than that of their own sex.
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