Jack Rotherfield, who was staying with his guardian, was delighted to welcome a new and pretty guest, and at once proceeded to exert himself to amuse and interest the convalescent, so that old Bessie used to smile demurely when she came into the room where the two young people would be sitting together, Rhoda gentle and rather listless, Jack energetically trying to rouse her from the somewhat abstracted state in which she still remained. Rhoda laughed at the idea of falling in love with Jack, a possibility which Bessie plainly foresaw and made no scruple about mentioning. “He’s very nice,” she said, “and, I suppose, very good-looking. But I don’t like him as much as I ought to do, considering how kind he is. He always seems to me to be saying things to me which he must have said before.” Bessie looked surprised. “Lor, miss, that’s not a bad guess, I’m afraid, if it is a guess,” she admitted. “Mr. Jack is so nice-looking, and so merry and bright, that the young ladies do make a fuss of him. Even Lady Sarah,” she added in a rather lower tone. A deep flush at once overspread Rhoda’s face. “I should hardly think,” she said quite tartly, “that a girl who had the good fortune to be liked by Sir Robert would care much for Mr. Rotherfield.” Bessie looked askance at her, but said nothing more on the subject, until she presently remarked in a rather dry tone that Lady Sarah was coming that afternoon, with her mother and one of her married sisters, to play tennis and to have tea in the grounds. Rhoda was excited by the news. She was exceedingly anxious to see the woman with whom Sir Robert was in love, and Bessie noted the trembling of her hands and the feverish light in her eyes as she dressed to go downstairs. Lady Sarah Speldhurst proved to be a very fascinating and lovely little person. Not nearly so tall as Rhoda herself, nor with the advantage of so good a figure as the younger girl, she was, at three and twenty, mistress of all the arts by which a pretty young woman makes the best of herself. Dark-eyed, with a brilliant complexion, and with masses of wavy dark brown hair, she dressed in light colours for choice, and was wearing, on this occasion, a tight-fitting lace dress of creamy tint over a slip of lemon colour, and a big black hat with black and white ostrich feathers. “Sir Robert don’t know what a lady’s dress bill means--yet,” remarked Bessie shrewdly, when she looked out and saw Lady Sarah in the garden. “What an odd dress to play tennis in!” was Rhoda’s matter-of-fact comment. Bessie smiled. “She don’t play tennis much herself. Her ladyship likes the sitting about with a racquet in her hand, and the cakes and the ices, better than running in the sun and getting her face red,” she said.