"Sir Jeoffry missed his mark when he called her an ugly brat," said the woman who had nursed her. "She will be a handsome woman—though large in build, it may be. She will be a brown beauty, but she will have a colour in her cheeks and lips like the red of Christmas holly, and her owl's eyes are as black as sloes, and have fringes on them like the curtains of a window. See how her hair grows thick on her little head, and how it curls in great rings. My lady, her poor mother, was once a beauty, but she was no such beauty as this one will be, for she has her father's long limbs and fine shoulders, and the will to make every man look her way."

"Yes," said the housekeeper, who was an elderly woman, "there will be doings—there will be doings when she is a ripe young maid. She will take her way, and God grant she mayn't be too like her father and follow his."