She was conscious even then that Mabel and Ethel, the stepsisters, were as nothing in comparison to herself in her mother's regard.

She had a certainty that her mother had loved her own father very much--the young, brilliant, spendthrift, last La Sarthe.

And her mother had been of the family, too--a distant cousin.

So she herself was La Sarthe to her finger tips--slender and pale and distinguished-looking.

She remembered the last scene with her stepfather before her coming to La Sarthe Chase.