‘Aha!’ said Sir Christopher, as he turned to look at Caterina, ’what do you think of this, Maynard?  Did you ever see Tina look so pretty before?  Why, that little grey gown has been made out of a bit of my lady’s, hasn’t it?  It doesn’t take anything much larger than a pocket-handkerchief to dress the little monkey.’

Lady Cheverel, too, serenely radiant in the assurance a single glance had given her of Lady Assher’s inferiority, smiled approval, and Caterina was in one of those moods of self possession and indifference which come as the ebb-tide between the struggles of passion.  She retired to the piano, and busied herself with arranging her music, not at all insensible to the pleasure of being looked at with admiration the while, and thinking that, the next time the door opened, Captain Wybrow would enter, and she would speak to him quite cheerfully.  But when she heard him come in, and the scent of roses floated towards her, her heart gave one great leap.  She knew nothing till he was pressing her hand, and saying, in the old easy way, ‘Well, Caterina, how do you do?  You look quite blooming.’

She felt her cheeks reddening with anger that he could speak and look with such perfect nonchalance.  Ah! he was too deeply in love with some one else to remember anything he had felt for her.  But the next moment she was conscious of her folly;—­’as if he could show any feeling then!’ This conflict of emotions stretched into a long interval the few moments that elapsed before the door opened again, and her own attention, as well as that of all the rest, was absorbed by the entrance of the two ladies.

The daughter was the more striking, from the contrast she presented to her mother, a round-shouldered, middle-sized woman, who had once had the transient pink-and-white beauty of a blonde, with ill-defined features and early embonpoint.  Miss Assher was tall, and gracefully though substantially formed, carrying herself with an air of mingled graciousness and self-confidence; her dark-brown hair, untouched by powder, hanging in bushy curls round her face, and falling in long thick ringlets nearly to her waist.  The brilliant carmine tint of her well-rounded cheeks, and the finely-cut outline of her straight nose, produced an impression of splendid beauty, in spite of commonplace brown eyes, a narrow forehead, and thin lips.  She was in mourning, and the dead black of her crape dress, relieved here and there by jet ornaments, gave the fullest effect to her complexion, and to the rounded whiteness of her arms, bare from the elbow.  The first coup d’oeil was dazzling, and as she stood looking down with a gracious smile on Caterina, whom Lady Cheverel was presenting to her, the poor little thing seemed to herself to feel, for the first time, all the folly of her former dream.

‘We are enchanted with your place, Sir Christopher,’ said Lady Assher, with a feeble kind of pompousness, which she seemed to be copying from some one else:  ’I’m sure your nephew must have thought Farleigh wretchedly out of order.  Poor Sir John was so very careless about keeping up the house and grounds.  I often talked to him about it, but he said, “Pooh pooh! as long as my friends find a good dinner and a good bottle of wine, they won’t care about my ceilings being rather smoky.”  He was so very hospitable, was Sir John.’