Opinions at Carbery Chase were very much divided as to the new-comer’s exact status and claims to consideration. There were those who invidiously described her as ‘Sir Sykes’s charity child,’ and appeared to regard her as a species of genteel mendicant most foolishly invited down to Devonshire. There were others who were not sorry for the arrival of any one considered capable of lending animation to a house where the regular routine of every-day life ran on with somewhat sluggish flow. And there were a few philosophers in plush or white aprons, much flouted by the rest, who held that Sir Sykes was himself the best judge as to what guests, permanent or temporary, should be allowed to share the shelter of his roof at Carbery. That there was enough and to spare in that opulent mansion which acknowledged Sir Sykes Denzil for its master, was patent to all. Large as was Sir Sykes’s household and handsome his expenditure (for how many baronets chronicled in the gilt-edged volumes of Messrs Dod and Debrett, can afford themselves the luxury of a third and fourth footman, a French _chef_ like high-salaried M. Cornichon, and a groom of the chambers?), he was known to live within his income; and was rumoured by his inferiors to be guilty of the offence, never mentioned otherwise than with a resentful reverence, of ‘putting by.’ Sir Sykes’s men and maids were probably not students of Dean Swift’s ironical advice to their order; but we may rely on it that the servants of Dives himself had strongly defined ideas as to the proportion of high feasting that should accompany the purple and fine linen of their patron. Meanwhile, in spite of the early training which is supposed to make an Englishman of Sir Sykes Denzil’s degree as outwardly impassive as a Red Indian, no one at Carbery appeared to think so much about the arrival of Miss Willis as did the baronet himself. Her coming did not now at anyrate partake of the character of a surprise, for weeks had naturally elapsed between the incoming of the late and that of the new mail, and there had been time enough for preparations, if such were necessary. Sir Sykes, however, on the morning of his ward’s arrival could not avoid, not merely the being nervous and anxious, but the exhibiting to all who cared to look of his inexplicable nervousness and unreasonable anxiety. He went and came at frequent and irregular intervals between his own traditional apartment the library, and that morning-room where his daughters usually sat over their sketches and lacework and china-painting, and all those laborious trifles on which young ladies employ their taper fingers.