"You must be fatigued, Miss Hunsden," he said. "With a ball in prospective, after your hard gallop, I should recommend a long rest."
"Sir Everard, I don't know the meaning of that word 'fatigue.' I never was tired in my life, and I am ready for the ball to-night, and a steeple-chase to-morrow."
She tripped off as she spoke, with a mischievous glance. She wanted to shock him, and she succeeded.
"Poor girl!" he thought, as he slowly turned homeward, "she is really dreadful. She never had a mother, I suppose, and wandering over the world with her father has made her a perfect savage. She is truly to be pitied—so exceedingly beautiful as she is, too!"
Sir Everard certainly was very sorry for that hoidenish Miss Hunsden. He thought of her while dressing for dinner, and he talked of her all through that meal "more in sorrow than in anger."
Sybilla Silver, quite like one of the family already, listened with greedy ears and eager black eyes.
"You ought to call, mother," the baronet said, "you and Mildred. Common politeness requires it, Captain Hunsden was my father's most intimate friend, and this wild girl stands sadly in need of some matronly adviser."
"I remember Captain Hunsden," Lady Kingsland said, thoughtfully, "and I remember this girl, too, when she was a child of three or four years. He was a very handsome man, I recollect, and he married away in Canada or the United States. There was some mystery about that marriage—something vague and unpleasant—no one knew what. She ought to be pretty, this daughter."
"Pretty!" Sir Everard exclaimed; "she is beautiful as an angel! I never saw such eyes or such a smile in the whole course of my life."
"Indeed!" his mother said, coldly—"indeed! Not even excepting Lady
Louise's?"