“It’s too bad,” I went on regretfully.  “Anne will not appreciate Clovelly, and she will spoil it for us.  She is not a girl I care for.  I don’t see why I should he made a convenience for Anne Ford,” I argued in my selfish way.  “I think I shall write her not to come.”

Sally laughed cheerfully.  “She won’t bother us, Cousin Mary.  It would be too bad to refuse her, wouldn’t it?  She can’t spoil Clovelly—­it’s been here too long.  Anne is rather overpowering,” Sally went on, a bit wistfully.  “She’s such a beauty, and she has such stunning clothes.”

The firelight played on the girl’s flushed, always-changing face, full of warm light and shadow; it touched daintily the white muslin and pink ribbons of the pretty negligee she wore, Sally was one of the poor girls whose simple things are always fresh and right.  I leaned over and patted her rough hair affectionately.

“Your clothes are just as pretty,” I said, “and Anne doesn’t compare with you in my eyes.”  I lifted the unfinished letter and glanced over it.  “All about her visit to Lady Fisher,” I said aloud, giving a resume as I read.  “What gowns she wore to what functions; what men were devoted to her—­their names—­titles—­incomes too.”  I smiled.  “And—­what is this?” I stopped talking, for a name had caught my eye.  I glanced over the page.  “Isn’t this curious!  Listen, my dear,” I said.  “This will interest you!” I read aloud from Anne’s letter.

“’But the man who can have me if he wants me is Sir Richard Leigh.  He is the very best that ever happened, and moreover, quite the catch of the season.  His title is old, and he has a yacht and an ancestral place or two, and is very rich, they say—­but that isn’t it.  My heart is his without his decorations—­well, perhaps not quite that, but it’s certainly his with the decorations.  He is such a beauty, Cousin Mary!  Even you would admire him.  It gives you quite a shock when he comes into a room, yet he is so unconscious and modest, and has the most graceful, fascinatingly quiet manners and wonderful brown eyes that seem to talk for him.  He does everything well, and everything hard, is a dare-devil on horseback, a reckless sailor, and a lot besides.  If you could see the way those eyes look at me, and the smile that breaks over his face as if the sun had come out suddenly!  But alas! the sun has gone under now, for he went this morning, and it’s not clear if he’s coming back or not.  They say his yacht is near Bideford, where his home is, and Clovelly is not far from that, is it?’”

I stopped and looked at Sally, listening, on the floor.  She was staring into the fire.

“What do you think of that?” I asked.  Sally was slow at answering; she stared on at the burning logs that seemed whispering answers to the blaze.

“Some girls have everything,” she said at length.  “Look at Anne.  She’s beautiful and rich and everybody admires her, and she goes about to big country-houses and meets famous and interesting people.  And now this Sir Richard Leigh comes like the prince into the story, and I dare say he will fall in love with her and if she finds no one that suits her better she will marry him and have that grand old historic name.”