Bessie looked askance at her, but said nothing more on the subject, until she presently remarked in a rather dry tone that Lady Sarah was coming that afternoon, with her mother and one of her married sisters, to play tennis and to have tea in the grounds.
Rhoda was excited by the news. She was exceedingly anxious to see the woman with whom Sir Robert was in love, and Bessie noted the trembling of her hands and the feverish light in her eyes as she dressed to go downstairs.
Lady Sarah Speldhurst proved to be a very fascinating and lovely little person. Not nearly so tall as Rhoda herself, nor with the advantage of so good a figure as the younger girl, she was, at three and twenty, mistress of all the arts by which a pretty young woman makes the best of herself. Dark-eyed, with a brilliant complexion, and with masses of wavy dark brown hair, she dressed in light colours for choice, and was wearing, on this occasion, a tight-fitting lace dress of creamy tint over a slip of lemon colour, and a big black hat with black and white ostrich feathers.
“Sir Robert don’t know what a lady’s dress bill means—yet,” remarked Bessie shrewdly, when she looked out and saw Lady Sarah in the garden.
“What an odd dress to play tennis in!” was Rhoda’s matter-of-fact comment.
Bessie smiled.
“She don’t play tennis much herself. Her ladyship likes the sitting about with a racquet in her hand, and the cakes and the ices, better than running in the sun and getting her face red,” she said.
Rhoda frowned a little. Pretty as Lady Sarah was, the younger girl felt that a better, a more sincere and noble-natured person than Lady Sarah appeared to be would have been a better match for the generous and good Sir Robert who was her own idol. She went downstairs slowly, resented the quick and almost supercilious manner in which Lady Sarah appeared to sum her up at a glance while shaking hands, and decided angrily that Sir Robert was throwing himself away.
The baronet himself, however, was evidently by no means of the same way of thinking. There was adoration in his mild grey eyes as he watched the brilliant little brunette, there was tenderness in the tone of his voice as he spoke to her, and it was abundantly clear that his infatuation was complete.
Jack Rotherfield, meanwhile, was less attentive to Rhoda than he had been before the appearance of Lady Sarah. Rhoda did not mind this, but she remarked it, and, sitting silent for the most part, she noticed a good deal more, as the afternoon wore on, that might have escaped the notice of a less observant or more talkative person.