“Oh, I couldn’t!” coaxingly.  “We play for very small stakes—­as a rule.  But it is amusing, Sara.  And, you know this place is as dull as ditchwater unless one does something.  But I won’t get into debt again—­I really won’t.”

Molly had all the caressing charm of a nice kitten, and now that the pressing matter of her indebtedness to Lester Kent was settled, she relapsed into her usual tranquil, happy-go-lucky self.  She rubbed her cheek confidingly against Sara’s.

“You are a pet angel, Sara, my own,” she said.  “I’m so glad you adopted us.  Now I can go to the Herricks’ tea-party this afternoon without having that twenty pounds nagging at the back of my mind all the time.  I suppose”—­glancing at the clock—­“it’s time we put on our glad rags.  The Lavender Lady said she expected us at four.”

Half-an-hour later, Molly reappeared, looking quite impossibly lovely in a frock of the cheapest kind of material, “run up” by the local dressmaker, and very evidently with no other thought “at the back of her mind” than of the afternoon’s entertainment.

The tea-party was a small one, commensurate with the size of the rooms at Rose Cottage, and included only Sara and Molly, Mrs. Maynard, and, to Sara’s surprise, Garth Trent.

As she entered the room, he turned quietly from the window where he had been standing looking out at the Herricks’ charming garden.

“Mr. Trent”—­Miss Lavinia fluttered forward—­“let me introduce you to Miss Tennant.”

The Lavender Lady’s pretty, faded blue eyes beamed benevolently on him.  She was so very glad that “that poor, lonely fellow at Far End” had at last been induced to desert the solitary fastnesses of Monk’s Cliff, but as she was simply terrified at the prospect of entertaining him herself—­and Audrey Maynard seemed already fully occupied, chatting with Miles—­she was only too thankful to turn him across to Sara’s competent hands.

“We’ve met before, Miss Lavinia,” said Trent, and over her head his hazel eyes met Sara’s with a gamin amusement dancing in them.  “Miss Tennant kindly called on me at Far End.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.”  Little Miss Lavinia gazed in a puzzled fashion from one to the other of her guests.  “Sara, my dear, you never told me that you and Dr. Selwyn had called on Mr. Trent.”

Sara laughed outright.

“Dear Lavender Lady—­we didn’t.  Neither of us would have dared to insult Mr. Trent by doing anything so conventional.”  The black eyes flashed back defiance at the hazel ones.  “I got caught in a storm on the Monk’s Cliff, and Mr. Trent—­much against his will, I’m certain”—­maliciously—­“offered me shelter.”

“Now that was kind of him.  I’m sure Sara must have been most grateful to you.”  And the kind old face smiled up into Trent’s dark, bitter one so simply and sincerely that it seemed as though, for the moment, some of the bitterness melted away.  Not even so confirmed a misanthrope as the hermit of Far End could have entirely resisted the Lavender Lady, with her serene aroma of an old-world courtesy and grace long since departed from these hurrying twentieth-century days.