Lady Caroline carried an eyeglass with a long handle of tortoise-shell. Through it she treated Dicky to a deliberate and disconcerting scrutiny, and lowered it to turn and ask Mrs. Harry,-- "You permit him to call you 'Aunt Sarah'?" Mrs. Harry laughed. "It sounds better, you will admit, than 'Aunt Sally,' and don't necessitate my carrying a pipe in my mouth. Oh yes," she added, with a glance at the boy's flushed face, "Dicky and I are great friends. In any one's presence but Mr. Hanmer's I would say 'the best of friends.'" Lady Caroline turned her eyeglass upon Mr. Hanmer. "Is this--er-- gentleman his tutor?" she asked. The question, and the sight of the lieutenant's mental distress, set Mrs. Harry laughing again. "In seamanship only. Mr. Hanmer is my husband's second-in-command and one of the best officers in the Navy." "I consider smoking a filthy habit," said Lady Caroline. "Yes, ma'am," murmured Mr. Hanmer. The odious eyeglass was turned upon Dicky again. He, to avoid it, glanced aside at Miss Diana. He found Miss Diana less unpleasant than her mother, but attractive only by contrast. She was a tall woman, handsome but somewhat haggard, with a face saved indeed from peevishness by its air of distinction, but scornful and discontented. She had been riding, and her long, close habit became her well, as did her wide-brimmed hat, severely trimmed with a bow of black ribbon and a single ostrich feather. "Diana," said Lady Caroline, but without removing her stony stare, "the child favours his mother." "Indeed!" the girl answered indifferently. "I never met her." "Oliver has her portrait somewhere, I believe. We must get him to show it to us. A toast in her day, and quite notably good-looking--though after a style I abominate." She turned to Mrs. Harry and explained: "One of your helpless clinging women. In my experience that sort does incomparably the worst mischief." "Oh, hush, please!" murmured Mrs. Harry. But Lady Caroline came of a family addicted to speaking its thoughts aloud. "Going to sea, is he? Well, on the whole Oliver couldn't do better. The boy's position here must be undesirable in many ways; and at sea a lad stands on his own feet--eh, Mr.--I did not catch your name?" "Hanmer, ma'am." "Well, and isn't it so?" "Not altogether, ma'am," stammered Mr. Hanmer. "If ever your ladyship had been in the Navy--" "God bless the man!" Lady Caroline interjected. "--you'd have found that--that a good deal of kissing goes by favour, ma'am." "H'mph!" said Lady Caroline when Mrs. Harry had done laughing. "The child will not lack protection, of course. Whether 'tis to their credit or not I won't say, but the Vyells have always shown a conscience for--er--obligations of this kind." On her way back to Sabines, where Sir Oliver had installed them, Lady Caroline again commended to her daughter his sound sense in packing the child off to sea.