Emerging from the kitchen, with a rolling-pin in her hand and her arms generously floured, Sarah gasped: “Never?”

“Well, we ain’t looking for no duchess to come a-visiting us, so if it ain’t a duchess it’s my Lady Broome!” replied Mr Nidd tartly. “Bustle about, my girl! She’s paying off the jarvey, but she don’t look to me like one as’ll stand higgling over the fare, so you’d do well to stir your stumps!”

The advice was unnecessary: Sarah was already in the kitchen again, stripping off her apron; and, within a few moments of hearing the knocker, she was opening the door to her visitor, looking as trim as wax, and in very tolerable command of herself.

An imposing figure confronted her, that of a tall, handsome woman, wearing a velvet pelisse, bordered with sable, and carrying a huge sable muff. A close hat, of bronze-green velvet to match her pelisse, and trimmed with a single curled ostrich plume, was set upon a head of exquisitely dressed dark hair; her gloves were of fine kid; and her velvet half-boots, like her hat, exactly matched her pelisse. Her countenance was arresting, dominated by a pair of brilliant eyes, in colour between blue and grey, and set under strongly marked brows. Her features were very regular, the contour of her face being marred only by the slight heaviness of her lower jaw, and rather too square a chin. She looked to be about forty years of age; and, at first glance, Sarah found her intimidating. Her smile, however, was pleasant, and her manners, while plainly those of a lady of quality, were neither high nor imposing, but at once kind and gracious. She said, with a faint smile, and in a voice more deeply pitched than the average: “Good morning! I am Lady Broome. And you, I think, must be Miss Sarah Nidd. Or should it be Mrs Nidd?”