Frances looked rather ashamed. She was barely two years younger than her sister, but on almost every subject—on questions of good manners and propriety above all—Jacinth's verdict was always accepted by her as infallible, though whence Jacinth had derived her knowledge on such points it would have been difficult to say. No one could have been less a woman of the world than the late Mrs Denison; indeed, the much misused but really sweet old word 'homely' might have been applied to her in its conventional sense without unkindly severity. And no life could have been simpler, though from that very fact not without a certain dignity of its own, than the family life at Stannesley, which was in reality the only training these girls had ever known.
'I'm very sorry, Jass,' said the younger sister, penitently. 'It was only—it did seem funny that her name was Harper, when I am so fond of Bessie and Marg'——
'I'm getting tired of your always talking of them,' said Jacinth. 'I daresay they're nice enough'——
'And they're quite ladies,' interposed Frances, 'though they are so very poor.'
'I wouldn't look down on them for that; I should think you might know me better,' said Jacinth. 'We're not at all rich ourselves, though I suppose papa and mamma seem so in India with all the parties and things they're obliged to have. And I never said the girls weren't "quite ladies," as you say. But I know how it will end: in a little while you won't like Bessie and Margaret any better than Prissy Beckingham. You fly at people so at first.'
'I don't think it will be that way this time,' said Frances in a tone of quiet conviction. 'There's something different about the Harpers.'
'It isn't a very uncommon name,' said Jacinth. 'There are all sorts of Harpers. Why, at Stannesley, the village schoolmaster's wife was called Harper before she married, I remember. And then Lord Elvedon's family name is Harper.'
They had drawn nearer to the other two by this time, and Phebe overheard the last words.
'If you please, Miss Jacinth, that is Lady Myrtle's family. Her father was Lord Elvedon, two or three back, and the Lord Elvedon now is a nephew or a cousin's son to her, though they never come near the place; it's been let ever since I can remember.'
'I wonder if she was brought up at Elvedon,' said Frances. 'It must seem rather sad to her, if she was there when she was a little girl, to have no one belonging to her there now.'