His family, it is true, had been seated for generations on its broad Hertfordshire lands, and his father had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath when the Prince of Wales, later Charles I., himself received the accolade.  His mother, too, was a Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romney, a family of old lineage and high respectability; but, apart from Sir John, no Jennings had ever aspired even as high as a mere knighthood, and certainly they were as far removed from coronets as from the North Pole.

Squire Jennings had another daughter, Frances, at this time a winsome little maid of eight summers, already showing promise of a rare loveliness.  And she, too, was destined to a career, almost as brilliant as, and more adventurous than that of her baby-sister.  Her story opened when one day she was transported, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, from the modest home in Hertfordshire to the glamour and splendours of the Royal Court, where her beauty dazzled all eyes.

The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her, and turned on her the battery of his sighs and smiles, his ogling and flattering speeches.  When she met his advances with coldness, he bombarded her with notes “containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent promises,” slipping them into her pocket or muff, as opportunity served; but the disdainful beauty dropped the billets-doux on the floor for any one to read who chose to pick them up, until at last the Royal lover was compelled to abandon the pursuit in despair.

James’s brother, the King, made violent love to her; and every Court gallant, from the Duke of Buckingham to Henry Jermyn, the richest beau in England, fluttered round her beauty like moths around a candle.  How, after many romantic vicissitudes, Frances Jennings gave her heart and hand to Dick Talbot, the handsomest man in the British Isles; how she raised him to a Dukedom, and, as Duchess of Tyrconnel, queened it as Vicereine of Ireland; and how, in later life, she sank from this dizzy pinnacle to such depths of poverty that for a time she was thankful to sell tapes and ribbons in the New Exchange bazaar in the Strand, is one of the most romantic stories in the annals of our Peerage.

While Frances Jennings was coquetting with coronets and playing the madcap at the Court of Whitehall, Sarah was growing to girlhood in her rustic environment in Hertfordshire, more interested in her pony and her toys than in all the baubles that made up the life of that very fine lady her sister, and giving no thought to her beauty, to which each day was adding its touch of grace.  But she was not long to remain in such innocence; for one day when she was still but a child of twelve her sister came in a splendid Court carriage, and took her off to London, where a very different life awaited her.

She was not, it is true, to move like Frances in the splendid circle of the Throne, though she was to be on its fringe and to catch many a glimpse of it.  Her more modest role was to be playfellow and companion of the Duke of York’s younger daughter, Anne—­a shy, backward child, a few years younger than herself, who suffered from an affection of the eyes, which practically closed books and the ordinary avenues of education to her.