“You mustn’t let Lady Sarah hear you speaking so admiring of her intended, or she’ll be jealous,” said she. A sudden shadow passed over the girl’s face. “Lady Sarah! Who is she?” she asked quickly, in a stifled voice. Bessie peered at her rather anxiously. “Dear, dear, miss, you mustn’t get so excited about it, or I shall feel I didn’t ought to have told you so much,” she said. A faint, mechanical smile appeared on Rhoda’s face. “Nonsense,” she said. “Of course I’m not excited, only interested. Who _is_ Lady Sarah?” The nurse hesitated a moment, but seeing that a red spot was beginning to burn in each of the invalid’s cheeks, she decided that it would be better to tell her what she wanted and have done with it. “Lady Sarah,” she said, gravely and deliberately, hoping that the style and title of the persons she was about to mention would duly impress her hearer, “is the youngest daughter of the Marquis of Eridge, and she is engaged to be married to Sir Robert Hadlow, who is madly in love with her.” A look of dismay, so ingenuous, so complete as to be touching, appeared on Rhoda’s face. Then she glanced quickly at the nurse, reddened deeply, and subduing her feelings, whatever those might be, answered in a matter-of-fact tone, in words which surprised Bessie. “The Marquis of Eridge! Oh, yes, I know. He was made bankrupt two years ago, and he has four of the most beautiful daughters possible.” Bessie was taken aback by the completeness of the girl’s information. “I’m sure I don’t know anything about the Marquis’s affairs,” she said, somewhat stiffly. “But a Marquis is a Marquis, and Lady Sarah is a most beautiful young lady. And Sir Robert is crazy about her, and to look at her it’s no wonder. But you’ll see her for yourself, I dare say, before you go away. She lives up in the Vale, at the Priory, and she and Lady Eridge are here most days when Sir Robert doesn’t go to the Priory.” Rhoda bent her head without speaking. And the nurse, though she reproached herself for the feeling and said to herself that it was ‘rubbish,’ felt a momentary wonder whether it would not have been better for Sir Robert, with his studious habits and his grave demeanour, to have loved an earnest, simple little girl like the blue-eyed, fair-haired Rhoda with the devotion in her eyes, rather than the brilliant and slightly disturbing creature whom he had chosen for his wife. CHAPTER II. RHODA PEMBURY’S DISCOVERY The day after this conversation with Bessie, Rhoda was allowed downstairs for the first time. Sir Robert was kindness itself to her, though he was rather puzzled by the extreme reserve and timidity of the girl whose life he had saved, never guessing, in his masculine obtuseness, at the sentimental cause of her rather perplexing demeanour.