To add to the agitation of my thoughts, Sara Cresswell chose to take that day for one of her odd visits. She came in the afternoon to stay with me till evening. She was clearly quite beyond her father’s control; not even subject to a wholesome restriction of hours and meal-times; for she never said her father was out to dinner on the occasions of her coming, nor accounted in any way for her liberty at his dinner-hour. The little brougham used to come for her at night, and her little maid in it--a sign, I suppose, that the father did not disapprove; but that was all. Only wilful as she was, I confess I had grown to like her very much. I sometimes lectured her; and once or twice we quarrelled; but she always came back next time just the same as ever. So quarrelling with her was evidently useless. I must say I had a very strange sensation in welcoming her to-day. Could she know her father’s base purposes about the Park which, according to all appearances, ought to be mine? Could she have been paying her court to those ladies with the hope of supplanting the true heir? A glance at her face, only too frank and daring always, might have undeceived me; but of course, I was bucklered up in my own thoughts, and could see nothing else. “You are ill,” said Sara, “or you are worried; or ’tis I have done something. If I have, I don’t mind; that is to say, I am very sorry, of course, and I will never do it again. But if you think you will get rid of me by looking glum, you are sadly mistaken. I shan’t go. If you won’t have me for a friend, I shall come for a servant, and fight it out with Lizzie. Lizzie, will you have me for ‘a neebor?’ Ah, I’m learning Scotch.” “Eh, that’s no Scotch!” cried Lizzie; “ye dinna ken what it is. I’m, maybe, no that good at learning folk now, for I have to speak English mysel’.” “And Italian, Lizzie!” cried Sara, clapping her hands, and forgetting all about my “glum” face. Lizzie’s elbows and ankles fell almost immediately, and the most extraordinary blush rose on the girl’s face. “Eh, but it’s funny to hear _twa_ speaking’t,” cried Lizzie, evading the subject eagerly. The truth is, she had got overmuch involved in the delightful excitement of the new language, and in consequence of the ludicrous fascination of the dictionary, by means of which Domenico and she conducted their conversations, had come to like the society of that worthy. When I found him escorting my child-maid and the baby out-of-doors, I thought it was time to remonstrate on the subject; and my remonstrance had woke a certain womanly consciousness in the awkward-sensitive girlish bosom of Lizzie. She was overwhelmed with shame.