Still, Beechfield was very different from the horribly lonely house in Essex to which she never returned willingly in her thoughts--though sometimes certain memories of all that had happened there would thrust themselves upon her, refusing to be denied.
Fortunately for the new occupant of The Trellis House, a certain type of prettiness gives its lucky possessor an extraordinary sense of assurance and tranquillity when dealing with the average man.

Enid Crofton wasn't quite sure, however, if Godfrey Radmore was an average man.

He had never made love to her in those pleasant, now far-away days in Egypt, when every other unattached man did so.

That surely proved him to be somewhat peculiar.
During the whole of her not very long life she had been petted and spoilt, admired and sheltered, by almost everyone with whom fate had brought her in contact.
Enid Crofton's father had been a paymaster in the Royal Navy named Joseph Catlin.

After his death she and her mother had lived on in Southsea till the girl was sixteen, when her mother had pronounced her quite old enough to be "out." Mrs.Catlin was still too attractive herself to feel her daughter a rival, and the two years which had followed had been delightful years to them both.