But Sir Sykes and Jasper, too, were forced to admit that Miss Willis was either an actress of consummate address, or, what really seemed the more probable, was merely appearing in her genuine character. Timid and somewhat constrained, but not awkward, was her manner of responding to the warm greeting of Sir Sykes’s two daughters and to the grave urbanity of the baronet himself. She did not say much; but her voice trembled when she thanked Sir Sykes for his ‘extreme kindness’ to a stranger like herself. Then Blanche kissed her. She should not be a stranger long, she said. And then the girl broke down, sobbing. ‘How good you all are to me,’ she said. ‘I hope—I do hope not to be very troublesome, not to’—— And then there were more tears and more kissing; and the Misses Denzil took complete possession of their new friend, and bore her off to be installed in her room, and to learn to be at home at Carbery. Nothing could have gone off better than the orphan’s reception; and even Jasper felt this, and forbore to sneer. His own heart was as hard as the nether millstone; but he accepted the fact that his sisters possessed organs of a different degree of sensibility, precisely as he owned that roses had perfume, and that the thrushes and nightingales sang sweetly in the garden. ‘She’s no more the sister of yonder pirate fellow,’ such was the captain’s conclusion, ‘than the last Derby winner was a drayhorse. I thought the rascal spoke mockingly of the relationship between her and him. No; she’s not Hold’s sister. I wonder whether she is mine?’ In the course of the afternoon of that day, Lord Harrogate, who had ridden over from High Tor, made his appearance. There was, as has been mentioned, a frequent exchange of neighbourly communications between the two great houses of the vicinity. The Earl, it is true, seldom called upon Sir Sykes, and Sir Sykes as seldom on the Earl; but the Countess was often at Carbery, and the young people of both families were much in each other’s company. By the time of Lord Harrogate’s visit, the girl from India had made considerable progress in winning the good-will of the Misses Denzil, prepossessed in her favour from the beginning. They had devoted the time since luncheon to shewing her the lions of Carbery—the tapestry of the ‘Queen’s Chamber,’ faded but sumptuous; the stained glass; the chapel; the pictures; the grand conservatory, built by a former lord of Carbery, on a scale too ambitious for the use of a private family, and which was kept up at a cost which even Sir Sykes murmured at; and the other local curiosities.