Fay was very docile with her masters and mistresses, but it is only fair to say that her abilities were not above the average. She sipped knowledge carelessly when it came in her way, but she never sought it of her own accord. Neither she nor Aunt Griselda were intellectual women. Fay played a little, sung charmingly, filled her sketchbook with unfinished vigorous sketches, chattered a little French, and then shut up her books triumphantly, under the notion that at sixteen a girl's education must be finished.
It must be confessed that Miss Mordaunt was hardly the woman to be intrusted with a girl's education. She was a gentle, shallow creature, with narrow views of life, very prim and puritanical--orthodox, she would have called it--and she brought up Fay in the old-fashioned way in which she herself had been brought up. Fay never mixed with young people; she had no companions of her own age; but people were beginning to talk of her in the neighborhood. Fay's youth, her prospective riches, her secluded nun-like life surrounded her with a certain mystery of attraction. Miss Mordaunt had been much exercised of late by the fact that one or two families in the environs of Daintree had tried to force themselves into intimacy with the ladies of the cottage; sundry young men, too, had made their appearance in the little church at Daintree, as it seemed with the express intention of staring at Fay. One of these, Frank Lumsden, had gone further--he had taken advantage of a service he had rendered the ladies, when Sulky had been more intractable than usual, to join Fay in her walks and rides. He was a handsome boy of about twenty, and he was honestly smitten with the young heiress's sweet face; but Aunt Griselda, who knew her brother's wish, had been greatly alarmed, and had thought of shutting up her cottage and taking Fay to Bath for the winter before Frank Lumsden came back to Daintree Hall for the Christmas vacation.
Aunt Griselda received Sir Hugh graciously, and prosed gently to him of his father's death; but Hugh turned the conversation skillfully to herself and Fay. He managed to extract a good deal of information from the simple woman about her lovely little niece. Miss Mordaunt could be garrulous on the subject of Fay's perfections--she looked upon Hugh Redmond as the suitor whom her brother would have chosen. Before long Hugh heard all about Frank Lumsden's enormities. Before he had visited many times at the cottage Aunt Griselda had confided her perplexities to his ear, and had asked his advice--of course he had commended her wisdom in driving the unlucky Frank from the field.