“But, my dear Miss Tempest, you should have rung,” exclaimed Lady Verner, half petrified at the young lady’s unformed manners, and privately speculating upon the sins Mrs. Cust must have to answer for.  “Was it Therese?”

“I don’t know,” replied Lucy.  “She was rather old, and had a broom in her hand.”

“Old Catherine, I declare!  Sweeping and dusting as usual!  She might have soiled your dress.”

“She wiped her hands on her apron,” said Lucy simply.  “She had a nice face:  I liked it.”

“I beg, my dear, that in future you will ring for Therese,” emphatically returned Lady Verner, in her discomposure.  “She understands that she is to wait upon you.  Therese is my maid, and her time is not half occupied.  Decima exacts very little of her.  But take care that you do not allow her to lapse into English when with you.  It is what she is apt to do unless checked.  You speak French, of course?” added Lady Verner, the thought crossing her that Mrs. Cust’s educational training might have been as deficient on that point, as she deemed it had been on that of “style.”

“I speak it quite well,” replied Lucy; “as well, or nearly as well, as a French girl.  But I do not require anybody to wait on me,” she continued.  “There is never anything to do for me, but just to fasten these evening dresses that close behind.  I am much obliged to you, all the same, for thinking of it, Lady Verner.”

Lady Verner turned from the subject:  it seemed to grow more and more unprofitable.  “I shall go and hear what Jan says, if he is there,” she remarked to Lionel.

“I wonder we did not see or hear him come in,” was Lionel’s answer.

“As if Jan could come into the house like a gentleman!” returned Lady Verner, with intense acrimony.  “The back way is a step or two nearer, and therefore he patronises it.”

She quitted the room as she spoke, and Lionel turned to Miss Tempest.  He had been exceedingly amused and edified at the conversation between her and his mother; but while Lady Verner had been inclined to groan over it, he had rejoiced.  That Lucy Tempest was thoroughly and genuinely unsophisticated; that she was of a nature too sincere and honest for her manners to be otherwise than of truthful simplicity, he was certain.  A delightful child, he thought; one he could have taken to his heart and loved as a sister.  Not with any other love:  that was already given elsewhere by Lionel Verner.

The winter evening was drawing on, and little light was in the room, save that cast by the blaze of the fire.  It flickered upon Lucy’s face, as she stood near it.  Lionel drew a chair towards her.  “Will you not sit down, Miss Tempest?”

A formidable-looking chair, large and stately, as Lucy turned to look at it.  Her eyes fell upon the low one which, earlier in the afternoon, had been occupied by Lady Verner.  “May I sit in this one instead?  I like it best.”