fancy into her head; though the child is only seventeen."

"At seventeen _I_ was still in the nursery, playing with my dolls,"
said Lady Belstone.

"Oh, Lady Belstone!" said an odd, deep, protesting voice.

John looked with amused interest at the speaker. The unlucky Sarah had
taken a low chair beside her hostess, and was holding one of the soft
white hands in her plump gloved fingers.

Sarah Hewel's adoration for Lady Mary dated from the days when she had
been ferried over the Youle with her nurse, to play with Peter, in his
chubby childhood. Peter had often been cross and always tyrannical,
but it was so wonderful to find a playmate who was naughtier than
herself, that Sarah had secretly admired Peter. She was the black
sheep of her own family, and in continual disgrace for lesser crimes
than he daily committed with impunity. But her admiration of Peter was
tame and pale beside her admiration of Lady Mary. A mother who never
scolded, who told no tales, who petted black sheep when they were
bruised and torn or stained entirely through their own wickedness, who
could always be depended on for kisses and bonbons and fairy-tales,
seemed more angelic than human to poor little Sarah; whose own mother
was wrapt up in her two irreproachable sons, and had small affection
to spare for an ugly, tiresome little girl.

Sarah, however, had slowly but surely struggled out of the ugliness
of her childhood; and John Crewys, regarding her critically in the
lamplight, decided she would develop, one of these days, into a very
handsome young woman; in spite of an ungainly stoop, a wide mouth that