Baroness Orczy

“ An excellent dinner served by Mistress Sally and her attendant little wenches put everybody into rare good-humour. Madame de Serval—pale, delicate, with gentle, plaintive voice and eyes that had acquired a pathetically furtive look—even contrived to smile, her heart warmed by the genuine welcome, the rare gaiety that irradiated this fortunate corner of God's earth. Wars and rumours of war reached it only as an echo of great things that went on in the vast outside world ”

“ Even Régine de Serval had smiled when my lord Hastings had asked her with grave solemnity whether Mme de Serval would wish "le fou de descendre"—the lunatic to come downstairs—meaning all the while whether she wanted the fire in the big hearth to be let down, seeing that the atmosphere in the coffee-room was growing terribly hot. ”

“ Honoré, had at first with the self-consciousness of youth adopted an attitude of obstinate and irreclaimable sorrow, until the antics of Master Harry Waite, pretty Sally's husband—jealous as a young turkey-cock of every gallant who dared to ogle his buxom wife—brought laughter to their lips. My Lord Hastings' comical attempts at speaking French, the droll mistakes he made, easily did the rest ”