“The Scotch are very proud,” said Mr. Fielding, in his most deprecating tone; “they are dreadfully independent, and like their own way. And, besides, she does not want anything of us. She is not, as Sarah says, a poor person. I think, perhaps, another day----” “Then why did you bring me here to see her?” said Clare, with some reason. Was it to read her a practical lesson--to show her that she was no longer queen in Arden? A flush of hasty anger came to her pale cheek. “I only meant----” Mr. Fielding began; “all that I intended was---- Why, here is Edgar! and Mr. Perfitt with him. About business, I suppose, as you two are going together. My dear boy, I am so glad you are taking to your work.” “We have been half over the estate,” said Edgar, coming in, and putting down his hat on Mary Smith’s ironing table, while she stood and gaped at him, forgetting her curtsey in the awe of so close an approach to the young Squire; “but Perfitt has some one to visit here, and I have come to see Sarah, which is not work, but pleasure. I did not expect to find you all. Perfitt, go and see your friend; never mind me. Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Edgar, standing suddenly aside. They all looked up for the moment with a little start, and yet there was nothing to startle them. It was only Sarah’s Scotch lodger, Mr. Perfitt’s relative, who had come into the little room. CHAPTER XIII. She was a woman of about sixty, with very dark eyes and very white hair--a tall woman, quite unbent by the weight of her years, and unshaken by anything she could have met with in them; and yet she did not look as if she had encountered little, or found life an easy passage from the one unknown to the skirts of the other. She did not look younger than her age, and yet there was no sentiment of age about her. She was not the kind of woman of whom one says that they have been beautiful, or have been pretty. She had perhaps never been either one or the other; but all that she had ever been, or more, she was now. Her eyes were still perfectly clear and bright, and they had depths in them which could never have belonged to them in youth. The outline of her face was not the round and perfect outline which belongs to the young, but every wrinkle had its meaning. It was not mere years of which they spoke, but of many experiences, varied knowledge, deep acquaintance with that hardest of all sciences--life. Not a trace of its original colour belonged to the hair--slightly rippled, with an irregularity which gave a strange impression of life and vigour to it--which appeared under her cap. The cap was dead white too, tied under her chin with a solid bow of white ribbon; and this mass of whiteness brought out the pure tints of her face like a picture. These tints had deepened a little in tone from the red and white of youth, but were as clear as a child’s complexion of lilies and roses. The slight shades of brown did but mellow the countenance, as it does in so many painted faces.