'Your _sister_!' said Mr. Piper, as soon as he could speak distinctly. 'That's as you choose to take it. She's none o' mine, thank God! But you take and make her more than your sister, and see how soon you'll come to repent it. It's down in my will. I've sworn it. Dead or alive, I won't have the jade in my family! If you've got a fancy for her, you may take her, but never come anigh Piper's Hill again!' 'You mistake the position of affairs,' said George calmly. 'Laura wouldn't have me if I wanted!' 'Ho, ho!' Mr. Piper's laugh was more insulting than mirthful. 'That's why she comes and hugs you on the lawn of a morning, is it?' The interview ended with an intimation that Mr. Piper will not have Laura as a daughter-in-law 'at any price,' and that if George choose to marry her it must be as a pauper, and unrelieved of his heavy burden of turf debts. Piper's stormy, almost speechless anger, like his craving for sympathy and approval, are alike often exceedingly pathetic. His personality, though less delicately drawn than that of his niece, Sara Cavendish, is a striking figure throughout the book. A good delineation of an old man is sufficiently rare in fiction to make that of Uncle Piper notable. Tasma has not equalled this performance in any of her other works. Josiah Carp, the Melbourne merchant in _In Her Earliest Youth_, and Sir Matthew Bogg, another of the same class, in the short story _Monsieur Caloche_, are shown only in a satirical and repulsive light, which necessarily makes them appear somewhat unreal. As a vivid study, combined with excellent comedy, the portrait of Sara Cavendish would not have been unworthy of Thackeray. The selfishness concealed by her demure exterior and great beauty, and the absurdly excessive estimate of her virtues made by the Reverend Francis Lydiat, are a warning to all susceptible young men. Lydiat was a passenger by the ship which carried Sara and her parents to Australia. When he gave his weekly sermons during the voyage, Miss Cavendish was always present, and looked at him with her large eyes to such purpose that they 'seemed to be absorbing his meaning into the soul of their possessor.' But there was nothing ethereal in Sara's thoughts. 'She had a fancy for imagining becoming dresses. She would build up a delightful wardrobe in the air, entering into as many details of her airy outfit as though it could be instantly materialised. And she liked to imagine a becoming background for her own beautiful person, in which a husband with the essentials of good birth and unlimited money, and the desirable qualifications of an air of distinction and great devotion to her, filled a reasonable space.' Lydiat had often seen her lost in daydreams such as it would have seemed to him almost a sacrilege to disturb, 'though it is probable that the only notion he would have been guilty of upsetting had reference to the shape of an imaginary velvet train.'