Chapter II

The next change that set in at Leet Hall concerned Miss Kate Dancox. That wilful young pickle, somewhat sobered by the death of Hubert in the summer, soon grew unbearable again. She had completely got the upper hand of her morning governess, Miss Hume--who walked all the way from Church Dykely and back again--and of nearly everyone else; and Captain Monk gave forth his decision one day when all was turbulence--a resident governess. Mrs. Carradyne could have danced a reel for joy, and wrote to a governess agency in London.

One morning about this time (which was already glowing with the tints of autumn) a young lady got out of an omnibus in Oxford Street, which had brought her from a western suburb of London, paid the conductor, and then looked about her.

"There!" she exclaimed in a quaint tone of vexation, "I have to cross the street! and how am I to do it?"

Evidently she was not used to the bustle of London streets or to crossing them alone. She did it, however, after a few false starts, and so turned down a quiet side street and rang the bell of a house in it. A slatternly girl answered the ring.

"Governess-agent--Mrs. Moffit? Oh, yes; first-floor front," said she crustily, and disappeared.

The young lady found her way upstairs alone. Mrs. Moffit sat in state in a big arm-chair, before a large table and desk, whence she daily dispensed joy or despair to her applicants. Several opened letters and copies of the daily journals lay on the table.

"Well?" cried she, laying down her pen, "what for you?"

"I am here by your appointment, made with me a week ago," said the young lady. "This is Thursday."

"What name?" cried Mrs. Moffit sharply, turning over rapidly the leaves of a ledger.

"Miss West. If you remember, I----"

"Oh, yes, child, my memory's good enough," was the tart interruption. "But with so many applicants it's impossible to be certain as to faces. Registered names we can't mistake."

Mrs. Moffit read her notes--taken down a week ago. "Miss West. Educated in first-class school at Richmond; remained in it as teacher. Very good references from the ladies keeping it. Father, Colonel in India."

"But----"

"You do not wish to go into a school again?" spoke Mrs. Moffit, closing the ledger with a snap, and peremptorily drowning what the applicant was about to say.

"Oh, dear, no, I am only leaving to better myself, as the maids say," replied the young lady, smiling.

"And you wish for a good salary?"

"If I can get it. One does not care to work hard for next to nothing."

"Or else I have--let me see--two--three situations on my books. Very comfortable, I am instructed, but two of them offer ten pounds a-year, the other twelve."

The young lady drew herself slightly up with an involuntary movement. "Quite impossible, madam, that I could take any one of them."

Mrs. Moffit picked up a letter and consulted it, looking at the young lady from time to time, as if taking stock of her appearance. "I received a letter this morning from the country--a family require a well-qualified governess for their one little girl. Your testimonials as to qualifications might suit--and you are, I believe, a gentlewoman----"

"Oh, yes; my father was----"

"Yes, yes, I remember--I've got it down; don't worry me," impatiently spoke the oracle, cutting short the interruption. "So far you might suit: but in other respects--I hardly know what to think."

"But why?" asked the other timidly, blushing a little under the intent gaze.

"Well, you are very young, for one thing; and they might think you too good-looking."

The girl's blush grew red as a rose; she had delicate features and it made her look uncommonly pretty. A half-smile sat in her soft, dark hazel eyes.

"Surely that could not be an impediment. I am not so good-looking as all that!"

"That's as people may think," was the significant answer. "Some families will not take a pretty governess--afraid of their sons, you see. This family says nothing about looks; for aught I know there may be no sons in it. 'Thoroughly competent'--reading from the letter--'a gentlewoman by birth, of agreeable manners and lady-like. Salary, first year, to be forty pounds.'"

"And will you not recommend me?" pleaded the young governess, her voice full of entreaty. "Oh, please do! I know I should be found fully competent, and promise you that I would do my best."

"Well, there may be no harm in my writing to the lady about you," decided Mrs. Moffit, won over by the girl's gentle respect--with which she did not get treated by all her clients. "Suppose you come here again on Monday next?"

The end of the matter was that Miss West was engaged by the lady mentioned--no other than Mrs. Carradyne. And she journeyed down into Worcestershire to enter upon the situation.

But clever (and generally correct) Mrs. Moffit made one mistake, arising, no doubt, from the chronic state of hurry she was always in. "Miss West is the daughter of the late Colonel William West," she wrote, "who went to India with his regiment a few years ago, and died there." What Miss West had said to her was this: "My father, a clergyman, died when I was a little child, and my uncle William, Colonel West, the only relation I had left, died three years ago in India." Mrs. Moffit somehow confounded the two.

This might not have mattered on the whole. But, as you perceive, it conveyed a wrong impression at Leet Hall.

"The governess I have engaged is a Miss West; her father was a military man and a gentleman," spake Mrs. Carradyne one morning at breakfast to Captain Monk. "She is rather young--about twenty, I fancy; but an older person might never get on at all with Kate."

"Had good references with her, I suppose?" said the Captain.

"Oh, yes. From the agent, and especially from the ladies who have brought her up."

"Who was her father, do you say?--a military man?"

"Colonel William West," assented Mrs. Carradyne, referring to the letter she held. "He went to India with his regiment and died there."

"I'll refer to the army-list," said the Captain; "daresay it's all right. And she shall keep Kate in order, or I'll know the reason why."

* * * * *

The evening sunlight lay on the green plain, on the white fields from which the grain had been reaped, and on the beautiful woods glowing with the varied tints of autumn. A fly was making its way to Leet Hall, and its occupant, looking out of it on this side and that, in a fever of ecstasy, for the country scene charmed her, thought how favoured was the lot of those who could live out their lives amidst its surroundings.

In the drawing-room at the Hall, watching the approach of this same fly, stood Mrs. Hamlyn, a frown upon her haughty face. Philip Hamlyn was still detained in the West Indies, and since her reconciliation to her father, she would go over with her baby-boy to the Hall and remain there for days together. Captain Monk liked to have her, and he took more notice of the baby than he had ever taken of a baby yet. For when Kate was an infant he had at first shunned her, because she had cost Katherine her life. This baby, little Walter, was a particularly forward child, strong and upright, walked at ten months old, and much resembled his mother in feature. In temper also. The young one would stand sturdily in his little blue shoes and defy his grandpapa already, and assert his own will, to the amused admiration of Captain Monk.

Eliza, utterly wrapt up in her child, saw her father's growing love for him with secret delight; and one day when he had the boy on his knee, she ventured to speak out a thought that was often in her heart.

"Papa," she said, with impassioned fervour, "_he_ ought to be the heir, your own grandson; not Harry Carradyne."

Captain Monk simply stared in answer.

"He lies in the _direct_ succession; he has your own blood in his veins. Papa, you ought to see it."

Certainly the gallant sailor's manners were improving. For perhaps the first time in his life he suppressed the hot and abusive words rising to his tongue--that no son of that man, Hamlyn, should come into Leet Hall--and stood in silence.

"_Don't_ you see it, papa?"

"Look here, Eliza: we'll drop the subject. When my brother, your uncle, was dying, he wrote me a letter, enjoining me to make Emma's son the heir, failing a son of my own. It was right it should be so, he said. Right it is; and Harry Carradyne will succeed me. Say no more."

Thus forbidden to say more, Eliza Hamlyn thought the more, and her thoughts were not pleasant. At one time she had feared her father might promote Kate Dancox to the heirship, and grew to dislike the child accordingly. Latterly, for the same reason, she had disliked Harry Carradyne; hated him, in fact. She herself was the only remaining child of the house, and her son ought to inherit.

She stood this evening at the drawing-room window, this and other matters running in her mind. Miss Kate, at the other end of the room, had prevailed on Uncle Harry (as she called him) to play a game at toy ninepins. Or perhaps he had prevailed on her: anything to keep her tolerably quiet. She was in her teens now, but the older she grew the more troublesome she became; and she was remarkably small and childish-looking, so that strangers took her to be several years younger than she really was.

"This must be your model governess arriving, Aunt Emma," exclaimed Mrs. Hamlyn, as the fly came up the drive.

"I hope it is," said Mrs. Carradyne; and they all looked out. "Oh, yes, that's an Evesham fly--and a ramshackle thing it appears."

"I wonder you did not send the carriage to Evesham for her, mother," remarked Harry, picking up some of the nine-pins which Miss Kate had swept off the table with her hand.

Mrs. Hamlyn turned round in a blaze of anger. "Send the carriage to Evesham for the governess. What absurd thing will you say next, Harry?"

The young man laughed in good humour. "Does it offend one of your prejudices, Eliza?--a thousand pardons, then. But really, nonsense apart, I can't see why the carriage should not have gone for her. We are told she is a gentlewoman. Indeed, I suppose anyone else would not be eligible, as she is to be made one of ourselves."

"And think of the nuisance it will be! Do be quiet, Harry! Kate ought to have been sent to school."

"But your father would not have her sent, you know, Eliza," spoke Mrs. Carradyne.

"Then----"

"Miss West, ma'am," interrupted Rimmer, the butler, showing in the traveller.

"Dear me, how very young!" was Mrs. Carradyne's first thought. "And what a lovely face!"

She came in shyly. In her whole appearance there was a shrinking, timid gentleness, betokening refinement of feeling. A slender, lady-like girl, in a plain, dark travelling-suit and a black bonnet lined and tied with pink, a little lace border shading her nut-brown hair. The bonnets in those days set off a pretty face better than do these modern ones. That's what the Squire tells us.

Mrs. Carradyne advanced and shook hands cordially; Eliza bent her head slightly from where she stood; Harry Carradyne stood up, a pleasant welcome in his blue eyes and in his voice, as he laughingly congratulated her upon the ancient Evesham fly not having come to grief en route. Kate Dancox pressed forward.

"Are you my new governess?"

The young lady smiled and said she believed so.

"Aunt Eliza hates governesses; so do I. Do you expect to make me obey you?"

The governess blushed painfully; but took courage to say she hoped she should. Harry Carradyne thought it the very loveliest blush he had ever seen in all his travels, and she the sweetest-looking girl.

And when Captain Monk came in he quite took to her appearance, for he hated to have ugly people about him. But every now and then there was a look in her face, or in her eyes, that struck him as being familiar--as if he had once known someone who resembled her. Pleasing, soft, dark hazel eyes they were as one could wish to see, with goodness in their depths.