However that might be, it was a fact; and Val could no more have openly opposed the resolute, sharp-tongued old woman to her face than he could have changed his nature.

He rarely called her anything but "ma'am," as their nurse had taught him and his brothers and sisters to do in those long-past years.
Before eight o'clock the guests had all assembled in the drawing-room, except the countess-dowager and Maude.

Lord Hartledon was going about amongst them, talking to one and another of the beauties of this, his late father's place; scarcely yet thought of as his own.

He was a tall slender man; in figure very much resembling Percival, but not in face: the one was dark, the other fair.

There was also the same indolent sort of movement, a certain languid air discernible in both; proclaiming the undoubted fact, that both were idle in disposition and given to ennui.
There the resemblance ended.