After the trouble she's been all her life to me, and all--just going to that excellent school in Germany--here's my aunt wanting to adopt her, or as good as adopt her--Lady Tintern, you know." Everybody who knew Mrs.Hewel knew also that Lady Tintern was her aunt; and Lady Tintern was a very great lady indeed.
"She is to come out this very season; that is why I took her to the Gilberts', to prepare her for the great plunge," said Mrs.Hewel, not intending to be funny.

"It will be a change for Sarah, such a hoyden as she has always been.

But my aunt won't wait once she has got a fancy into her head; though the child is only seventeen." "At seventeen _I_ was still in the nursery, playing with my dolls," said Lady Belstone.
"Oh, Lady Belstone!" said an odd, deep, protesting voice.
John looked with amused interest at the speaker.

The unlucky Sarah had taken a low chair beside her hostess, and was holding one of the soft white hands in her plump gloved fingers.
Sarah Hewel's adoration for Lady Mary dated from the days when she had been ferried over the Youle with her nurse, to play with Peter, in his chubby childhood.

Peter had often been cross and always tyrannical, but it was so wonderful to find a playmate who was naughtier than herself, that Sarah had secretly admired Peter.