“What an interesting face and figure!” she now exclaimed, at gaze through the lorgnon, as though it were a celestial aid to vision needful for such a long range, as it must be even for angelic eyes looking from the skiey ramparts to a world where bare feet press the earth, to say nothing of woollen doormats.

Loveday blenched before that searching gaze, the rare red burned in her cheek and her own eyes sank abashed.  She rubbed the flexible sole of one foot in a stiffened curve of shyness against the slim ankle of the other.  Mrs. Lear exclaimed aloud in her horror.

“Loveday Strick, where are your manners to, that you come into the parlour without a curtsey?” said she.  “And indeed, I must ask you to excuse her, ma’am, for she’s but a nobody’s girl from the village, and doesn’t know how to behave before gentry.”

Mrs. Lear was a good soul, and had ever been kind to Loveday, but she too had her sensibilities, and they were outraged by this untimely intrusion of one world into another which was doubtless unaware even of its existence.  But Miss Le Pettit put up a delicate gloved hand in protest.

“Nay, you frighten the child, Mrs. Lear,” she said kindly, “I am sure she means no disrespect.  Did you ... what is your name, girl?’

“Loveday, ma’am.”

“What a strange, old-fashioned name, to be sure,” commented the taffetas angel, with a crystal sounding titter, “’tis as good as the heroine in a play.  Whom were you called for, child?”

“My mother, ma’am,” said Loveday, and now her cheek had ceased to burn and looked pale, but she raised her eyes and confronted the vision steadily.

Mrs. Lear coughed.

“I declare I should like to do a watercolour drawing of you, Loveday,” went on Miss Le Pettit, “what do you say?  Will you come up to the Manor one day and let me paint your portrait?”

Loveday had not a notion what that process might be, but had she taken it to be the blackest witchcraft (as she very likely would if she saw it) she would still not have blenched.  Her eye lightened, some instinct told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her.  At last her singularity was standing her in good stead.  Confidence came to her, even a feeling of slight scorn for the world she knew, a feeling, indeed, to which she was not altogether a stranger, but which up till now she had stifled in affright at its presumption.

“What do you say, Mrs. Lear?” asked Miss Le Pettit, turning with her charming condescension to the old woman, whom, after all, she was merely visiting on a little matter of a recipe for elderflower-water, “what do you say?  Would she not look picturesque with an orange kerchief over her head and a basket of fruit in her arms, as a young street-vendor?”

“She would certainly look outlandish, ma’am,” was all Mrs. Lear could manage.