“Diana,” said Lady Caroline, but without removing her stony stare, “the child favours his mother.”

“Indeed!” the girl answered indifferently.  “I never met her.”

“Oliver has her portrait somewhere, I believe.  We must get him to show it to us.  A toast in her day, and quite notably good-looking—­though after a style I abominate.”  She turned to Mrs. Harry and explained:  “One of your helpless clinging women.  In my experience that sort does incomparably the worst mischief.”

“Oh, hush, please!” murmured Mrs. Harry.

But Lady Caroline came of a family addicted to speaking its thoughts aloud.  “Going to sea, is he?  Well, on the whole Oliver couldn’t do better.  The boy’s position here must be undesirable in many ways; and at sea a lad stands on his own feet—­eh, Mr.—­I did not catch your name?”

“Hanmer, ma’am.”

“Well, and isn’t it so?”

“Not altogether, ma’am,” stammered Mr. Hanmer.  “If ever your ladyship had been in the Navy—­”

“God bless the man!” Lady Caroline interjected.

“—­you’d have found that—­that a good deal of kissing goes by favour, ma’am.”

“H’mph!” said Lady Caroline when Mrs. Harry had done laughing.  “The child will not lack protection, of course.  Whether ’tis to their credit or not I won’t say, but the Vyells have always shown a conscience for—­er—­obligations of this kind.”

On her way back to Sabines, where Sir Oliver had installed them, Lady Caroline again commended to her daughter his sound sense in packing the child off to sea.

“They will take ’em at any age, I understand; and Mrs. Vyell, it appears, has no objection.”

“She is not returning to Carolina by sea.”

“No; but she can influence her husband.  I must have another talk with her . . . a pleasant, unaffected creature, and, for a sailor’s wife, more than presentable.  One had hardly indeed looked to find such natural good manners in this part of the world.  Her mother was a Quakeress, she tells me:  yet she laughs a good deal, which I had imagined to be against their principles.  She doesn’t say ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ either.”

“I heard her tutoyer her husband.”

“Indeed? . . .  Well,” Lady Caroline went on somewhat inconsequently, “Harry is a lucky man.  When one thinks of the dreadful connections these sailors are only too apt to form—­though one cannot wholly blame them, their opportunities being what they are . . .  But, as I was saying, Oliver couldn’t have done better, for himself or for the child.  At home the poor little creature could never be but a question; and since he has this craze for salt water—­curious he should resemble his uncle in this rather than his father—­one may almost call it providential. . . .  At the same time, my dear, I wish you could have shown a little more interest.”

“In the child?  Why?”

“Really, Diana, I wish you would cure yourself of putting these abrupt questions. . . .  Your Cousin Oliver is now the head of the family, remember.  He has received us with uncommon cordiality, and put himself out not a little—­”