“So the baby of two was sent to the child of eighteen, and Jean glows with gratitude and tells you how good it was of her at-one-time stepmother to think of her!  That is how she seems to take life:  no suspecting of motives:  looking for, therefore perhaps finding, kindness on every side.  It is rather absurd in this wicked world, but I shouldn’t wonder if it made for happiness.

“The Taunton child has, of course, no shadow of claim on the Jardines, but he is to them a most treasured little brother.  ‘The Mhor,’ as they call him, is their great amusement and delight.  He is quite absurdly good-looking, with great grave green eyes and a head most wonderfully set on his shoulders.  He has a small income of his own, which Jean keeps religiously apart so that he may be able to go to a good school when he is old enough.

“The great-aunt who brought up the Jardines must have been an uncommon old woman.  She died (perhaps luckily) just as the young Gervase Taunton came on the scene.

“It seems she always dressed in rustling black silk, sat bolt upright on the edge of chairs for the sake of her figure, took the greatest care of her hands and complexion, and was a great age.  She had, Jean said, ’come out at the Disruption.’  Jean was so impressive over it that I didn’t like to ask what it meant.  Do you suppose she made her debut then?

“Perhaps ‘the Disruption’ is a sort of religious tamasha.  Anyway, she was frightfully religious—­a strict Calvinist—­and taught Jean to regard everything from the point of view of her own death-bed.  I mean to say, the child had to ask herself, ’How will this action look when I am on my death-bed?’ Every cross word, every small disobedience, she was told, would be a ‘thorn in her dying pillow.’  I said, perhaps rather rudely, that Great-aunt Alison must have been a horrible old ghoul, but Jean defended her hotly.  She seems to have had a great admiration for her aged relative, though she owned that her death was something of a relief.  Unfortunately most of her income died with her.

“I think perhaps it was largely this training that has given Jean her particular flavour.  She is the most happy change from the ordinary modern girl.  Her manners are delightful—­not noisy, but frank and gay like a nice boy’s.  She neither falls into the Scylla of affectation nor the Charybdis of off-handness.  She has been nowhere and seen very little; books are her world, and she talks of book-people as if they were everyday acquaintances.  She adores Dr. Johnson and quotes him continually.

“She has no slightest trace of accent, but she has that lilt in her voice—­I have noticed it once or twice before in Scots people—­that makes one think of winds over heathery moorlands, and running water.  In appearance she is like a wood elf, rather small and brown, very light and graceful.  She is so beautifully made that there is great satisfaction in looking at her. (If she had all the virtues in the world I could never take any interest in a girl who had a large head, or short legs, or thick ankles!) She knows how to dress, too.  The little brown frock was just right, and the ribbon that was tied round her hair.  I’ll tell you what she reminded me of a good deal—­Romney’s ’Parson’s Daughter.’