Everybody who knew Mrs. Hewel knew also that Lady Tintern was her aunt; and Lady Tintern was a very great lady indeed.

“She is to come out this very season; that is why I took her to the Gilberts’, to prepare her for the great plunge,” said Mrs. Hewel, not intending to be funny.  “It will be a change for Sarah, such a hoyden as she has always been.  But my aunt won’t wait once she has got a fancy into her head; though the child is only seventeen.”

“At seventeen I was still in the nursery, playing with my dolls,” said Lady Belstone.

“Oh, Lady Belstone!” said an odd, deep, protesting voice.

John looked with amused interest at the speaker.  The unlucky Sarah had taken a low chair beside her hostess, and was holding one of the soft white hands in her plump gloved fingers.

Sarah Hewel’s adoration for Lady Mary dated from the days when she had been ferried over the Youle with her nurse, to play with Peter, in his chubby childhood.  Peter had often been cross and always tyrannical, but it was so wonderful to find a playmate who was naughtier than herself, that Sarah had secretly admired Peter.  She was the black sheep of her own family, and in continual disgrace for lesser crimes than he daily committed with impunity.  But her admiration of Peter was tame and pale beside her admiration of Lady Mary.  A mother who never scolded, who told no tales, who petted black sheep when they were bruised and torn or stained entirely through their own wickedness, who could always be depended on for kisses and bonbons and fairy-tales, seemed more angelic than human to poor little Sarah; whose own mother was wrapt up in her two irreproachable sons, and had small affection to spare for an ugly, tiresome little girl.

Sarah, however, had slowly but surely struggled out of the ugliness of her childhood; and John Crewys, regarding her critically in the lamplight, decided she would develop, one of these days, into a very handsome young woman; in spite of an ungainly stoop, a wide mouth that pouted rather too much, and a nose that inclined saucily upwards.

Her colouring was fresh, even brilliant—­the bright rose, and creamy tint that sometimes accompanies vivid red hair—­and of a vivid, uncompromising red were the locks that crowned Miss Sarah’s little head, and shaded her blue-veined temples.

Miss Crewys had, in consequence, long ago pronounced her to be a positive fright; and Lady Belstone had declared that such hair would prove an insuperable obstacle to her chances of getting a husband.

“I know she’s very young,” said Mrs. Hewel, glancing apologetically at her offspring.  “But what can I do?  There’s no going against Lady Tintern; and at seventeen she ought to be something more than a tomboy, after all.”

“You were married at seventeen, weren’t you?” said Sarah to Lady Mary, in her deep, almost tragic voice—­a voice that commanded attention, though it came oddly from her girlish chest.