“Whoever the girl marries, she will rule him with a rod of iron.  She had better marry a fool and be done with it.  So why not an eligible and titled and good-natured fool?” the old lady had written to Mrs. Hewel, who was very far from understanding such reasoning, and wept resentfully over the letter.

Why should Lady Tintern snatch her only daughter away from her in order to marry her to a fool?  Mrs. Hewel was of opinion that a sensible young man like Peter would be a better match.  She supposed nobody would call Sir Peter Crewys of Barracombe a fool; and as for his being young, he was only a few months younger than Lord Avonwick, and Sarah would have just as pretty a title, even if her husband were only a baronet instead of a baron.  Thus she argued to herself, and wrote the gist of her argument to her aunt.  Why was Sarah to go hunting the highways and byways for titled fools, when there was Peter at her very door,—­a young man she had known all her life, and one of the oldest families in Devon, and seven thousand acres of land only next week, when he would come of age, and could marry whomever he liked?  Though, of course, Sarah must not go against her aunt, who had promised to do so much for her, and given her so many beautiful things, whether young girls ought to wear jewellery or not.

This was the distracted letter which was bringing Lady Tintern to Hewelscourt.  She had been annoyed with Sarah for refusing Lord Avonwick, and thought it would do the rebellious young lady no harm to return for a time to the bosom of her family, and thus miss Newmarket, which Sarah particularly desired to attend, since no society function interested her half so much as racing.

The old lady had not in the least objected to Sarah’s friendship for young Sir Peter Crewys.  Sarah, as John had truly said, was a star with many satellites; and among those satellites Peter did not shine with any remarkable brilliancy, being so obviously an awkward country-bred lad, not at home in the surroundings to which her friendship had introduced him, and rather inclined to be surly and quarrelsome than pleasant or agreeable.

Lady Tintern had not taken such a boy’s attentions to her grand-niece seriously; but if Sarah were taking them seriously, she thought she had better inquire into the matter at once.  Therefore the energetic old woman not only arrived unexpectedly at Hewelscourt in the middle of luncheon, but routed her niece off her sofa early in the afternoon, and proposed that she should immediately cross the river and call upon Peter’s mother.

“I have never seen the place except from these windows; perhaps I am underrating it,” said Lady Tintern.  “I’ve never met Lady Mary Crewys, though I know all the Setouns that ever were born.  Never mind who ought to call on me first!  What do I care for such nonsense?  The boy is a cub and a bear—­that I know—­since he stayed in my house for a fortnight, and never spoke to me if he could possibly