It was Miss Sybilla Silver who somehow had grown to be as much a fixture there as the marble and bronze statues.
She had written to find her friends in Plymouth, or she said so, and failed, and she had managed to make herself so useful to my lady that my lady was very glad to keep her.

She could make caps like a Parisian milliner; she could dress her exquisitely; she could read for hours in the sweetest and clearest of voices, without one yawn, the dullest of dull High Church novels.

She could answer notes and sing like a siren, and she could embroider _prie-dieu_ chairs and table-covers, and slippers and handkerchiefs, and darn point lace like Fairy Fingers herself.
She was a treasure, this ex-lad in velveteen, and my lady counted it a lucky day that brought her to Kingsland.

But Miss Sybilla belonged to my lady's son, and not to my lady.

To the young lord of Kingsland her allegiance was due, and at his bidding she was ready, at a moment's notice, to desert the female standard.
Sir Everard, who took a kindly interest in the dashing damsel with the coal-black hair and eyes, who had shot the poacher, put the question plump one day: "My mother and sister leave before the end of the year, Sybilla.