An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter: LADY LAURA TRESHAM had just come down stairs from her chamber to the breakfast-parlor. I mention this, because at the Priory everything that the Lady Laura did became a matter of interest. And why not? She was a visitor, she was a charming girl, she was Blanche Charnley's special friend and confidante, she was Mrs. Charnley's prime favorite; the Rector himself was fond of her; and all the most influential young members of the High Church at Guestwick (the Rev. Norman Charnley's church) were in love with her, and watched the maroon curtains of the Charnley pew far more attentively than they watched the antique carven pulpit, of which the Guestwick aristocracy was so justly proud. I have said Laura Tresham was a charming girl, and I repeat it, adding my grounds for the assertion. Perhaps I can best do this by presenting her to my readers just as she stands before the large, open Gothic window of the cozy, old-fashioned little breakfast-room, the fresh morning sunlight falling upon her, the swallows twittering under the ivied eaves; ivy, Gothic window, and sunlight forming exactly the right framing and accompaniments to Lady Laura Tresham as a picture. She is just tall enough to be sometimes, in a certain girlish way, a thought regal; she is just fair enough to be like a stately young lily; she has thick, soft, yellow blonde hair; she has blue, velvet eyes, and with her long, white morning-dress, wears blue velvet trimmings just the color of her eyes; for it is a fancy of hers to affect velvets because she says ribbons don't suit her. But, in spite of this assertion, it really would be a difficult matter to find anything which did not suit Laura Tresham. Everything suits her, or rather it is she who suits everything. Blanche Charnley, who adores her, thinks there is nothing like her beauty, and her stately high-bred ways. All that Laura says, or does, or thinks, is in Blanche's eyes almost perfect, and she will hear no other view of the matter expressed. In true girl-fashion, the two have vowed eternal friendship, and they discuss their little confidences together with profound secrecy and the deepest interest....