The girl was exactly like the fashion-plate in the morning's paper.

She wore a very short skirt and Zouave jacket in grey cloth, high-heeled grey boots, with black tips and gaiters, a preposterous little hat perched on one side of a broad white forehead, across which the hair was parted like a boy's, and an ostrich plume on the top of the hat, which nodded and fluttered so extravagantly that the face beneath almost escaped the spectator's notice.

Yet it was on the whole a handsome face, audacious, like its owner's costume, and with evident signs--for Bridget Cookson's sharp eyes--of slight make-up.
Miss Cookson knew who she was.

She had seen her in the neighbouring town that morning, and had heard much gossip about her.

She was Miss Farrell, of Carton Hall, and that gentleman coming down the hill more slowly behind her was no doubt her brother Sir William.
Lame?
That of course was the reason why he was not in the army.