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                       THE UNDESIRABLE GOVERNESS

                            [Illustration]

                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

                      NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
                        ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

                       MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

                      LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
                               MELBOURNE

                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

                                TORONTO




                            THE UNDESIRABLE
                               GOVERNESS

                                  BY

                          F. MARION CRAWFORD

                 AUTHOR OF “SARACINESCA,” “THE DIVA’S
                    RUBY,” “THE WHITE SISTER,” ETC.

                              ILLUSTRATED

                               New York

                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

                                 1910

                         _All rights reserved_


                        COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1910,

                       BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

            Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1910.


                             Norwood Press
                J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
                        Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

            Used by permission of the _Pall Mall Magazine_


                                                             FACING PAGE

“They rode races bareback in the paddock”                              3

“The last governess, a lovely creature with violet eyes”              11

“In dead silence they stood quietly”                                  16

“‘Ellen!’ he cried, ‘in Heaven’s name, what has happened?’”           43

“Such ringing laughter as the silent moor had never heard before”     64

“‘The truth is,’ answered Lady Jane, ‘it’s about your hair’”          81

“‘I don’t think Miss Scott at all dreadful,’ answered Lionel”         88

“‘You mark my words, miss. The Lord knoweth His own’”                109

“‘Where are the girls?’ she inquired, in a frigid tone”              119

“The huge black shadow of the balloon ran swiftly over it”           151

“‘We are awfully sorry to intrude on your privacy in this way,’
he said”                                                             163

“A scene of indescribable panic followed”                            184

“‘Miss Scott! Why, I saw her at King’s Follitt a month ago!’”        198

“‘You? The daughter of Sir Randolph? You’re mad!’”                   221




THE UNDESIRABLE GOVERNESS




CHAPTER I


“By-the-bye,” began Colonel Follitt, looking at his wife across the
tea-things, “have you done anything about getting a governess?”

“No,” answered Lady Jane, and a short pause followed, for the subject
was a sore one. “I have not done anything about getting a governess,”
she added presently, in the tone suitable to armed neutrality.

“Oh!” ejaculated the Colonel.

Aware that it would be hardly possible to find fault with the
monosyllable, he slowly stirred his tea. He took it sweet, with cream,
for in spite of a fairly successful military career and a well-developed
taste for sport, he was a mild man. He was also a ladies’ man, and
preferred feminine society, even in his own home, to that of
fellow-sportsmen and former brother officers. Lady Jane had, indeed, no
other fault to find with him; but this one sometimes constituted a
serious grievance.

“You talk,” said Lady Jane presently, “as if the matter was urgent.”

“I said ‘oh,’” answered her husband mildly.

“Precisely,” retorted the lady; “but I know very well what you meant.”

“If I meant anything, I meant that those two girls are all over the
place and need some one to look after them.”

“I really think I’m able to take care

[Illustration: “They rode races bareback in the paddock.”]

of them myself for a few days,” answered Lady Jane stiffly.

“No doubt, no doubt. But, all the same, I caught them potting rooks in
the park this morning with my best gun; and Barker tells me that
yesterday, when the men were at dinner, they managed to get Schoolboy
and Charley’s Aunt out of the stables on the sly and rode races bareback
in the paddock, till he came back. I don’t know why they did not break
their necks.”

Lady Jane did not seem much moved by this intelligence, for the Follitts
were a sporting family, and she had been used to their ways for a
quarter of a century.

“I will speak to them,” she said, as if that would insure their necks.

At this point their eldest son came in quietly and sat down half-way
between his father and mother. Colonel Follitt was a well-set-up,
tough-looking man, who looked younger than his age and dressed just a
little younger than he looked. There were a few lines in his face, his
well-trimmed moustache was only just beginning to turn grey, and he had
the eyes of a boy. His wife was neither fair nor dark, and quite as
well-preserved as he, besides having the advantage of being ten years
younger. But the eldest son of this good-looking couple seemed
prematurely old. He was tall, thin, and dark, and had the general air
and cut of a student. He could ride, because all the Follitts rode, and
he shot as well as the average man who is asked to fill a place for a
couple of days with an average shooting-party; but he much preferred
Sanskrit to horses, and the Upanishads to a day on the moors. From sheer
love of study he had passed for the Indian Civil Service after taking
his degree; but instead of taking an appointment he had plunged into the
dark sea of Sanskrit literature, and was apparently as much at home in
that element as a young salmon in his native stream. His father mildly
said that the only thing that might have made him seem human would have
been a little of the family susceptibility to feminine charm. But though
he was heir to a good estate, he had not yet shown the least inclination
to marry, and pretty governesses came and went unnoticed by him. Like
most students, he was very fond of his home, but he made frequent
journeys to London at all times of the year for the purpose of making
researches in the British Museum. Even the most careful mother could
feel little or no anxiety about such a son, and Lady Jane, for reasons
of her own, sometimes wished that his brothers would take up their
quarters in the neighbourhood of the British Museum for six months at a
time.

She gave him his tea now, just as he liked it, and a long silence
followed. He sat quite still, looking into his cup with the air of
pleasant but melancholy satisfaction peculiar to students who have just
left their books.

He looked up at last, towards his mother, with a far-away expression.

“By-the-bye,” he asked, “when is the new governess coming?”

A vague smile just moved Colonel Follitt’s neat moustache, but Lady
Jane’s fine brow darkened.

“I am considering the question,” she answered, as a judge sometimes
replies to a barrister’s clever insinuation, saying that the Court will
“bear the point in mind.”

Noting her manner, and well understanding what it meant, Lionel thought
it necessary to make some explanation.

“I was thinking of those girls,” he said with profound gravity.

“A little holiday will do them good,” said Lady Jane.

“So far as that goes,” answered Lionel thoughtfully, “a woman’s
education is complete when she has forgotten her arithmetic and has
learned to play the piano well enough to drive people out of the house.”

“My dear,” retorted Lady Jane, “your sisters are not learning to play
the piano.”

“Thank goodness! That is spared us. But they are forgetting their
arithmetic.”

“According to you,” replied his mother, “it is a step in the right
direction.”

“It’s all very well, but that’s no reason why they should climb to the
top of the King’s Oak by the lodge and pepper every horse that passes
with buckshot from a catapult.”

Again the Colonel’s moustache moved; but his son wore none, and not the
shadow of a smile disturbed the grave lines of his mouth.

“I will speak to them,” said Lady Jane.

“I wonder what you’ll say!”

Before Lady Jane had time to explain what she would say, her second son
appeared. He was a startling contrast to his elder brother and less than
two years younger: he was a sort of red-haired Hermes; his colouring
completely spoiled his beauty, which would have been, perhaps, too
perfect for a man, if his complexion had not been freckled like a
trout’s back and if his hair had been of any colour but that of inflamed
carrots. As it was, he was just a very fine specimen of young humanity,
and it would never have occurred to any one to call him even handsome.
He was a credit to the family, though he had only got a pass degree at
Oxford, for he had been Captain of the boats at Eton, and had pulled
Four for the ‘Varsity in a winning year. It is true that he showed no
taste for any profession or career, and seemed to have made up his mind
to spend the rest of his life at home, because there was no finer
hunting country in Great Britain; but then, there would always be
bread-and-butter and horses for him, without seeking those necessities
elsewhere, and if Lionel did not marry, he, Jocelyn, would take a wife.
In the meantime he seemed quite unconscious of the admiration that was
plentifully accorded to him by that large class of young women who
prefer a manly man to a beauty-man. At all events he was absolutely
reticent about his own affairs, and neither his mother nor his brothers
could be sure that he had ever said a word to a woman which might not be
repeated by the town crier. But there was no mistaking the glances that
were bestowed upon him, nor the tone of voice in which some of the very
nicest girls spoke to him. They could not help it, poor things. Jocelyn
sat down on a low stool between his mother and Lionel, with his heels
together, his knees apart, his shoulders bent forward, and his eyes
fixed hungrily on the buttered toast. He looked like a big, cheerful
mastiff, expecting to be fed by a friendly hand.

Lady Jane proceeded to satisfy his very apparent wants.

“I say,” he began, as he watched the cream mingling with the tea, “what
is the new Miss Kirk’s name?”

[Illustration: “The last governess, a lovely creature with violet
eyes.”]

Miss Kirk had been the last governess--a lovely creature with violet
eyes and hair that curled at her temples. Lady Jane had found her
photograph in the pocket of a shooting-coat belonging to the Colonel
which had been brought to her maid to have a button sewn on, and the
circumstance had led to the young lady’s abrupt departure. More or less
similar circumstances, in some of which her two younger sons had been
concerned, had produced similar results in a number of cases. That is
why the question of the new governess was a sore point at King’s
Follitt.

“No one has yet answered my advertisement,” answered Lady Jane, “and
none of our friends seem to know of just the right person.”

“How very odd!” observed the Colonel. “We generally get so many more
answers than we want.”

“What those girls need is a keeper,” said Jocelyn, with an audible
accompaniment of toast-crunching.

“You might get one from the County Lunatic Asylum,” suggested Lionel
thoughtfully. “You could get one for about the same price as a good
governess, I should think.”

“I don’t mean that,” answered Jocelyn. “I mean a gamekeeper. They’ve
gone in for poaching, and it’s time it was stopped.”

“Eh? What?” Colonel Follitt did not understand.

“They’ve been snaring hares all over the park. That’s one thing. Then,
they are catching all the trout in the stream with worms. If that isn’t
poaching, what is? Rather low-down form, too. Worms!”

This roused the Colonel. “Really! Upon my word, it’s too bad!”

“What becomes of the game and the fish?” inquired the Colonel.

“They give them to the postman, and he brings them chocolates in
exchange,” answered Jocelyn. “They lie in wait for him behind the hedge
on the Malton road.”

“Upon my word!” cried the Colonel again. “There’s no doubt about it,
Jane, you must get a governess at once. By-the-bye, where are they now?”

“Poaching,” answered Jocelyn, crunching steadily.

“They are welcome to the hares,” said the Colonel; “but catching trout
with worms is a little too much! In March, too!”

While he was speaking his youngest son had entered--a lean young athlete
who bore a certain resemblance to both his elder brothers, for he had
Lionel’s quiet, dark face, together with something of Jocelyn’s build
and evident energy. “I think so too,” he said crossly, as he sat down
beside his brother at the corner of the tea-table. “It’s high time that
governess came.”

“What’s the matter now?” asked Jocelyn.

Every one looked at Claude, who seemed slightly ruffled, though he was
usually the most even-tempered of the family.

“Oh, nothing! At least, I suppose not. They had the new motor out on the
moor this afternoon.”

“My new motor!” cried Lady Jane, roused at last.

Motoring was her contribution to the list of the family sports.

“Yes,” answered Claude, very quietly now. “Ferguson and I were out
looking after the young birds. Rather promising this year, I should
say.”

He vouchsafed no further information, and began to sip his tea, but Lady
Jane was trembling with anger.

“Do you mean to say that they were actually out on the moor--off the
road? Where was Raddles? You can’t mean to say that he let those
two----” Lady Jane was unable to express her feelings.

“Oh, yes. As soon as I got home I went to see about it, for I supposed
you wouldn’t be pleased. They had locked the poor devil up in the
storeroom of the garage, and he couldn’t get out. It’s really time
something was done.”

“But didn’t you try to stop them?” asked Lady Jane. “Why didn’t you get
in and bring them home yourself?”

“They bolted as soon as they saw us,” answered Claude, “and a pony
sixteen years old is no match for a new motor. When I last saw them
they were going round Thorley’s at about twenty-five miles an hour.”

“How long ago was that?” asked Lady Jane, for to tell the truth her
anger was mingled with some anxiety.

“About three o’clock,” answered Claude.

Colonel Follitt rose. “We had better go and look for them at once,” he
said gravely.

But at that moment the subjects of his uneasiness walked in together,
pink and white, smoothed and neat, and smiling innocently in a way that
would have done credit to a dachshund that had just eaten all the cake
on the table when nobody was looking.

They were a pretty pair, about fourteen and fifteen, the one fair, the
other dark, with a fresh complexion. In the dead

[Illustration: “In dead silence they stood quietly.”]

silence they stood quietly beside the tea-table, apparently waiting for
their mother to fill their cups.

“Do you mind telling us where you’ve been?” she inquired, in a tone that
boded no good.

The two girls looked at each other and then looked at her. “We’ve been
on the moor,” they said together, with a sweet smile.

“So I gathered from what Claude has just told us.”

Lady Jane looked from Gwendolen to Evelyn, and then at Gwendolen again.
She had always found it hard to face the air of mild innocence they put
on after doing something particularly outrageous.

“Oh, well, since Claude has told you all about it, of course you know. I
hope you don’t mind very much.”

“Raddles says the motor’s all right, and that it’s a very good test,
because if it will stand that it will stand anything.”

This reassuring statement was vouchsafed by Evelyn, who was the elder
sister and the fair one, and, if anything, the calmer of the two. Both
had the sweetest possible way of speaking, and seemed quite surprised
that their doings should not be thought quite normal.

“It was awfully low-down of you to go and tell, all the same,” Gwendolen
observed, smiling at Claude.

“I thought it rather natural,” he answered, “as it seemed quite probable
that you had broken your necks.”

“You deserved to, I must say,” said Lady Jane tartly, “though I’m glad
you didn’t. I shall send you both to a boarding-school to-morrow.”

But this appalling threat had been used too often to produce anything
more than an excess of meek submissiveness. The delinquents at once
assumed the air and bearing of young martyrs, took their cups quietly,
and sat down side by side on a little sofa.

“I’ll tell you what, you two,” said the Colonel: “I won’t have any one
fishing with worms in my trout streams.”

“Why? Is it any harm?” asked Evelyn, apparently surprised.

“Harm!” cried Jocelyn. “It’s poaching, it’s spoiling the fishing
outright, and it’s against the law in the close season--that’s all.”

“We didn’t know,” said Gwendolen.

“And you’d better not ride Schoolboy without my leave,” put in Jocelyn.

“Nor take Charley’s Aunt out of her box without asking me,” added
Claude.

“Nor borrow my best gun to pot rooks with,” said the Colonel.

“Nor dare to go near any of the motors, and especially not the new
Mercèdes,” enjoined Lady Jane very severely.

But by-and-by, when she was dressing for dinner, and had reached the
stage of having her hair done, she looked through the evening paper, as
she usually did during that tedious process, and she found in the column
of advertisements the one she had last inserted, and she read it over.

     GOVERNESS WANTED, to take charge of two girls of 14 and 15
     respectively; family residing in Yorkshire and London. Must have
     first-rate degree and references. Charm of manner, symmetry of
     form, and brilliancy of conversation especially not desired, as
     husband and three grown-up sons much at home.--Apply by letter to
     J. F., P.O. Hanton, Yorks.




CHAPTER II


Considering the nature of Lady Jane’s advertisement and the brutal
frankness of its wording, she had no right to be surprised because no
one answered it immediately. It is not every young or middle-aged
spinster of superior education and impeccable manners who will readily
admit that she is entirely lacking in charm, symmetry of form, and
talent for conversation. Lady Jane had reckoned on this, and was
tolerably certain that no governess would offer herself who did not
fulfil the conditions so literally as to have had trouble in finding
employment anywhere else.

On the day following the small events I have just narrated, Lionel went
to town, as he often did, in order to consult a manuscript in the
British Museum. He said that he might be away three or four days, or
possibly a week.

That very evening, to her great satisfaction, Lady Jane at last received
an application in answer to the tempting offer she had set forth in the
column of Wants. The letter was dated from an address in Kensington, and
was written in a singularly clear and unadorned hand which pleased Lady
Jane at first sight. The writer said that she was twenty-three years of
age, and had taken a first at a woman’s college, which she named. She
gave references to the wives of two distinguished men, who wrote
mysterious capital letters after their names and whom Lady Jane promptly
found in _Who’s Who_. With regard to the unusual qualifications required
by the advertisement, the applicant added, with a touch of sadness,
that she fulfilled them only too well. Though not positively deformed,
she limped slightly and had one shoulder higher than the other; it was
quite needless, she said, to add that she had no charm of manner, and
she could assert with confidence that, although she did not suffer from
shyness and had no impediment in her speech, it was a painful effort to
her to join in ordinary conversation. In conclusion, she said that in
spite of her physical disadvantages she had never been ill a day in her
life, and was able to walk long distances without fatigue. In fact,
walking was good for her lameness. If desired, she would come on trial
for a fortnight, or would make the journey merely to show herself, if
her expenses were paid. She signed herself “Ellen Scott,” and hoped for
an early answer.

This certainly looked promising. Lady Jane was in a hurry, and in order
to gain time she telegraphed to the two ladies mentioned in the letter,
inquiring as to Miss Scott’s character, and the answers were perfectly
satisfactory. She then wrote to say that, on the whole, the candidate
had better come for a fortnight. She added that she expected Miss Scott
to dine in her own room.

Lady Jane was alone in her morning room when the new governess arrived
and was ushered in. Lady Jane took a good look at her before asking her
to sit down. On the whole she thought that Miss Scott had not overstated
the case against her appearance. Her limp had been perceptible as she
crossed the room, her left shoulder was certainly higher than the other,
and figure she had none, in any æsthetic sense. Her feet were small;
but afterwards, when she sat down, Lady Jane saw that the sole of her
right shoe was much thicker than the other. Her complexion was not good.
It had probably once been clear and rather fair, without much natural
colour, but was now disfigured by a redness on one cheek which was
almost a blotch, and her small nose was distinctly red. She had nice
brown eyes, it is true, and a frank expression when she looked at Lady
Jane, but after a moment or two the latter was sure that one eye
wandered a little. As if conscious of her defect, or weakness, Miss
Scott looked down at once, and when she raised her lids again both eyes
were once more focussed in the same line. Her plain dark hat was put on
rather far back, and her brown hair was drawn straight up from her
forehead and was twisted into a little hard bun behind. All this Lady
Jane took in at a glance.

“Won’t you sit down?”

Miss Scott seated herself on the edge of a high chair, but said nothing.

“You must be tired,” observed Lady Jane, not unkindly, though rather as
a matter of course.

“No,” answered Miss Scott, in a submissive tone, “I am not at all
tired.”

She spoke as if she were rather sorry that she was not, as it seemed to
be expected of her; and a pause followed, during which Lady Jane felt a
little awkwardness at finding herself face to face with the undesirable
governess she had sought, and who knew herself to be undesirable, and
was prepared to be apologetic.

“I think I ought to tell you,” said Lady Jane at last, “that my girls
are a little wild--rather sporting--I daresay you understand the sort
of thing I mean. I hope you have a good deal of firmness of character.”

Miss Scott said nothing to this, but nodded gravely as if to say that if
she possessed any firmness she would use it. She was evidently a silent
young person.

“They are not nasty-tempered at all,” Lady Jane continued. “On the
contrary. But they are perfect little pickles. Just to give you an
idea--the other day they actually locked the chauffeur in and took out
my own new motor. I really hope you will be able to prevent that sort of
thing.”

Again Miss Scott gravely nodded, and this time her right eye certainly
wandered a little.

“I daresay you would rather go to your room and settle yourself a
little before seeing them,” suggested Lady Jane.

“Please, I think I should like to see them at once.”

Lady Jane rang, and told the man who came to send her the two girls.

“Beg pardon, my lady, but the young ladies are gone out.”

“Oh, indeed? Don’t you think you could find them?”

“I’ll try, my lady,” answered the footman with perfect gravity, “but it
may take an hour or two, as your ladyship knows.”

“Oh, yes. Well, then, you had better show Miss Scott to her room, and
send somebody to look for them. You see,” she added, turning to the new
governess, “they have got altogether out of the habit of regular hours.
I hope you’ll be quite comfortable.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Scott, who had risen; and she followed the
footman meekly with her limping gait.

Lady Jane Follitt had rarely experienced a more intimate satisfaction
than she felt when her husband and two younger sons straggled into
luncheon, and each in turn glanced quickly at the new governess, and
then sat down with an expression of visible disappointment. The Colonel,
who was a mild and kindly man, addressed one or two remarks to the
newcomer, which she answered as briefly as possible in her somewhat
monotonous voice, but Jocelyn and Claude ignored her existence. The
girls sat on either side of her, very neat and quiet and well-behaved,
but they eyed her from time to time with the distrust which a natural
enemy inspires at close quarters. They were taking her measure for the
coming contest, and in the mind of each girl there was already a
conviction that it would not be an easy one. They had seen all sorts:
the one whose gentle ways and pleasant conversation delighted the
Colonel; the one that used to blush and stammer whenever Jocelyn came
into the room; the one who was almost a match for Claude at lawn tennis,
and who could ride nearly as well as the Follitts themselves, because
she was the daughter of an old-fashioned sporting parson, who had spent
his substance on horse-flesh, and broken his neck in the hunting field;
they had seen Miss Kirk, with her violet eyes, who drew all men in the
house after her as easily as the Pied Piper of Hamelin led away the
little children; but they had never till now seen one who gave them the
impression that she meant business, and would probably get the better
of them. If she did, there would be an end of snaring hares and angling
for trout, of riding bareback, and of peppering the passing horses on
the Malton road with buckshot from catapults. The future was shrouded in
deep gloom, through which stalked hideous spectres of geography,
arithmetic, and the history of England. They would be told to sit up
straight and not to ink their fingers, and they would be taken to walk
instead of being let loose after their meals like a brace of terrier
pups, to roam the park and harass man and beast.

There was one chance left. Miss Scott might be a musician. There had
been one governess of that sort, too, and the girls had enjoyed long
hours of sweetest liberty while she was hammering away at the piano in
the schoolroom.

“Do you play?” asked Evelyn in a sweet low voice.

“Oh, no,” answered Miss Scott. “I don’t know one note from another.”

The last ray of hope was extinguished, the gloom deepened, and Evelyn
relapsed into mournful silence after exchanging a depressed glance with
Gwendolen.

These fateful forebodings soon proved to be only too well grounded, and
before two days had passed Lady Jane was thoroughly convinced that she
had found the long-sought treasure; her own face grew more and more
serene, and she motored with a light heart, undisturbed by the
tormenting suspicion that a lovely creature with violet eyes might be at
that very time telling the story of her life to the Colonel, or
sympathising with Lionel’s difficulties in pursuit of learning, or
blushing under Jocelyn’s nose, or possibly being taught to ride in the
paddock by Claude. Not one of them all would go near Miss Scott if he
could help it, not one would so much as speak to her unless it were
absolutely necessary.

And yet the undesirable governess seemed quite happy in her
surroundings, and even smiled sometimes, when she spoke to the girls. It
was a pleasant smile, and she had good teeth; and possibly, if any of
the men had thought of looking at her face, it would have occurred to
them that, if it had not been for her one blotchy cheek, and her red
nose, and her way of putting her hair straight back from her forehead
that made her look like a skinned rabbit, her face might not have been
ugly. But if such a thought had crossed Lady Jane’s mind, she would have
consoled herself by reflecting on poor Miss Scott’s lameness and her
slightly deformed shoulder. There was that wandering eye, too, which was
another source of comfort; and then there was the undeniable fact that
the girls were kept in the schoolroom in the morning, and that Miss
Scott was always with them when they went out.

With the inhuman cruelty of youth, the two girls deliberately tried to
walk the lame governess off her feet; but to their amazement and
mortification she kept pace with them without difficulty, and was at
least as fresh as they were after a tramp of seven or eight miles over
the moor. They were still further astonished when they found that she
could beat them out and out at tennis, with no apparent effort. They had
always supposed that a lame person could not run; but Miss Scott ran
like a deer, and, indeed, she seemed less lame then than when she was
only walking.

It was not often that her eye wandered when she was with them, but when
it did they felt sure that she was watching them both at the same time,
though they were on opposite sides of her; and the sensation was most
unpleasant.

They asked her questions about herself, particularly when they were at
their lessons, because a little conversation was always a pleasant
change; and though she answered very briefly at such times, she did not
seem to mind talking of her life at home when they were out for a walk.
There was nothing mysterious about Miss Scott: her mother had died when
she was very young, and her father was a learned man and a student, who
spent his life among books; they lived in Kensington; he had taught her
till she had gone to the college, where she had worked hard because she
knew that she must earn her living, but had been very happy because she
had made friends; that was where she had learnt to play tennis so well,
and she told the girls all about the life there, with a great many
amusing little stories. In fact, except during lessons, or when, in the
wickedness of their hearts, they tried to get away from her for such
illicit purposes as worm-fishing, snaring hares, or popping at rooks
with their brothers’ guns, they found her a pleasant companion.

“I shall be glad,” said Lady Jane at the end of the first week, and with
a really friendly smile, “if you will stay on. I see that you have a
very good influence on the girls.”

“Thank you,” answered Miss Scott, and her eye wandered unmistakably.

Lady Jane informed the Colonel of her decision, and he had rarely seen
her in a more delightful humour. Miss Scott, she said, was really the
ideal governess in every way. She knew her business, she was quiet,
modest, and unassuming. All previous governesses had possessed three
sets of manners: one for the drawing-room, and of a kind which Lady Jane
considered perfectly odious; the second manner was for the schoolroom,
and had usually been unsatisfactory; the third was the way they had with
the servants, which was of such a nature that the whole household
detested them. But Miss Scott was quite different in that respect. By
means known to herself, Lady Jane had ascertained that the household
approved of her; that the butler included her in what might be called
“the clause of favoured nations,” by bestowing his best attention on
her small wants at table; that any of the footmen would have cheerfully
blacked her shoes; that the housemaids brought her hot water as often as
if she had been one of the family, and that Lady Jane’s own maid
considered her a “perfect lady.”

“I am glad that you are satisfied at last, my dear,” answered the
Colonel thoughtfully. “She’s not much to look at, but she can’t help
that, poor soul.”

“Precisely,” answered Lady Jane, with evil glee; “she can’t help it.”

In due time Lionel came back, having been absent nearly a fortnight. He
arrived not long before dinner, when Miss Scott was not about, having
disappeared to her own quarters for the evening, as usual.

When he had almost finished dressing, Claude dropped in on his way
down. Lionel had always been more intimate with him than with Jocelyn.

“The Lady has done it this time,” observed the younger brother, sitting
on the arm of an easy-chair before the fire.

“Has the new governess come?” asked Lionel absently.

“Yes, and I rather think she has come to stay for life. Avoid looking at
her if you meet her, my dear chap. The Gorgon wasn’t in it with her. She
would turn a Bengal tiger to stone.”

Lionel looked at his brother with curiosity, for he had not often heard
him express himself so strongly. “What’s the matter with her?”

“I forget all the things,” answered Claude; “but I know that she has a
big blotch on one cheek and a red nose, and she looks like a skinned
hare, and she’s got a hump on one shoulder, and she’s lame, and----”

“Good gracious!” Lionel’s jaw had positively dropped at the description,
and he was staring at his brother in a most unusual way.

“I forgot,” continued Claude: “one eye wanders----”

“I say,” interrupted Lionel, in a tone of irritation, now that his first
astonishment had subsided, “it’s not good enough, you know. My credulity
was badly injured when I was young. What’s the new governess’s name?”

“Miss Scott,” answered Claude; “and I really don’t think I’ve
exaggerated. The Governor is awfully depressed about it. The worst of
the thing is that she is turning out to be the long-sought treasure, and
the Lady is in the seventh heaven.”

“It’s very odd,” observed Lionel thoughtfully. “Is there any one
stopping?”

“The Trevelyans are coming to-morrow, and I believe there is to be a big
end party this Saturday.”

“What Trevelyans?” asked Lionel. “Is it the mad lot, or their ballooning
cousins?”

“The balloonists,” answered Claude. “They are quite as crazy as the
others, though.”

“I think I prefer them to the mad ones, myself. The Lincolnshire ones
make me rather nervous. I always expect to hear that another of the
family has had to be locked up, and it might happen to be the one I had
just been talking to. I suppose Miss Scott doesn’t come to dinner, does
she?”

“Rather not!”

The two brothers went down together, and during dinner Lionel, who
still distrusted Claude’s description of the new governess, asked
questions about her of the others, and though no one said anything very
definite before the servants, the fact that she was lame and far from
good-looking was made quite clear to him, as also that his mother was
thoroughly satisfied with her services. Indeed, Lady Jane enlarged upon
the subject in a way that was almost tiresome.

Lionel was not usually the most punctual member of the household, but on
the following morning he was the first in the breakfast-room, and was
standing before the fire reading a newspaper, when the door opened
quietly and Miss Scott entered alone, closing it after her. She came
forward towards Lionel with her beginning of a smile, as if they had met
before. He held out his hand

[Illustration:

     “‘Ellen!’ he cried, ‘in Heaven’s name, what has happened?’”
]

to her mechanically, but his eyes were staring at her with a startled
look, and he grew visibly paler every moment.

“How do you do?” she asked quite naturally, as they shook hands.

Lionel could hardly speak. “Ellen!” he cried, “in Heaven’s name what has
happened?”

Before she could answer both heard the handle of the door moving, and
when the two girls entered the room the governess was standing by her
own place, waiting for them, and Lionel had turned his back and was
poking the fire to hide his emotion.




CHAPTER III


As has already appeared, there were two families of Trevelyans among the
Follitts’ friends. The Lincolnshire branch was usually described as the
mad lot, because at least two members of the family had disappeared
suddenly from society, and as it had never been said that they were
dead, it was quite easy to say that they were insane. There were
numerous more or less idle tales about these two and concerning their
property, of which the sane members were supposed to be enjoying the
income.

The ballooning branch, which Lionel thought rather the madder of the
two, was represented by old Major Trevelyan, who had invented an
airship that would not move, his married son, and his daughter Anne, who
were enthusiastic aëronauts, but had no belief at all in the old
gentleman’s invention; on the other hand, their confidence in their own
methods was boundless, and several rather serious accidents had left it
quite undiminished.

Young Mrs. Trevelyan sided with her father-in-law, for in her heart she
was a dreadful coward in the air, though she feared nothing on land or
water; and she found that the best way to be left at home was to quarrel
with her husband and sister-in-law about ripping-lines, safety-valves,
detachable cars, and other gear. When an ascent was not far off, and her
husband, as usual, showed signs of wishing her to accompany him, the
wise little lady would get the old gentleman to coach her thoroughly in
his own views, which she then proceeded to air and defend till her
husband lost his temper and flatly refused to take her with him, which
was precisely the end she desired to gain.

There had lately been one of those ascents which, in the ordinary course
of things, had been followed by a descent with some of those results
that are frequent in ballooning, if not inevitable. When the three
younger members of the family appeared, Anne Trevelyan’s handsome nose
was decorated with a fine strip of court plaster and her brother had a
sprained wrist, which obliged him to carry his arm in a sling. But they
all seemed very happy and united, for young Mrs. Trevelyan was the last
person in the world to say “I told you so.”

Lady Jane approved of ballooning, in principle, because it was
distinctly “sporting,” but she thought it dangerous compared with
motoring.

“It’s all very well,” retorted Anne Trevelyan, “but you could count on
your fingers the people you have ever heard of who have been killed by
balloons, whereas every one I know has either killed or been killed by
motors.”

“I am quite sure I never killed a human being,” answered Lady Jane; “and
I’m quite alive myself.”

“Yes, but how long will it last?” inquired Miss Anne cheerfully.

“And as for danger,” answered Lady Jane, “whenever I see you, you have
just escaped with your life! It’s quite needless to ask why you have a
large piece of court plaster on your beautiful nose, my dear, isn’t it?”

“Oh, quite!”

As no new ascent was being talked of, Mrs. Trevelyan did not take Lady
Jane’s side, and the subject was soon dropped. Moreover, in the course
of the afternoon a thing so new and surprising happened that it drove
all other questions out of the field of interest in the Follitt family.
Lionel actually went for a walk with his sisters and the new governess.
He made no secret of it, and his start with the girls and Miss Scott was
witnessed by the assembled party soon after luncheon. They were all in a
large room which was neither a hall, nor a library, nor a drawing-room,
nor anything else directly definable. In the days when the children had
been much smaller, but not quite small enough to be kept out of the way,
it had been their general place of meeting, and the Colonel had
christened it the “mess-room,” because, as he explained, it was always
in such a mess. Each member of the family had a place in it which was
regarded as his or her own--a particular chair, a particular table or a
corner of a table, with a place for books and newspapers. Lady Jane
often wrote her letters there instead of in her morning room, and the
Colonel had a small desk before a window, which he preferred to the much
more luxurious arrangements in his study; the three young men often
lounged there on rainy days, and even the girls kept what they called
their work in an old-fashioned work-basket-table before a small sofa
which was their coign of vantage; for by keeping very quiet they
sometimes made their elders forget their presence, and they heard many
interesting things.

Ordinary acquaintances were never asked into the mess-room, and were not
likely to find their way to it uninvited, as it was not in direct
communication with the other large rooms on the ground floor, and could
only be reached by a small dark passage which was entered from the hall
by a half-concealed door. But the Trevelyans had lately been promoted
out of acquaintanceship to the rank of friends--partly, perhaps, because
Lady Jane hoped that Lionel might take it into his head to fall in love
with Anne, who had always shown, or pretended to show, an unaccountable
preference for him. His mother could not imagine why in the world a
handsome and rather dashing sort of girl, who was almost too fond of
society, should be attracted by that one of the brothers whom almost
every one thought the least attractive; but since it was so, and since
Anne was a thoroughly nice young woman, and since it was evidently the
eldest son’s duty to marry, Lady Jane did all she could to bring the two
together; and she was not at all pleased when she heard her husband’s
exclamation of surprise on seeing that Lionel was actually going for a
walk with his sisters and the governess.

“Upon my word, my dear, I never expected to see that.”

Lady Jane was near him, and looked out; the others heard, and went to
different windows to see what was the matter.

“In a long and misspent life,” said Claude, who was not twenty-two, “I
have never seen anything more extraordinary.”

“I say, governor,” asked Jocelyn, “there’s no insanity in our family, is
there?”

“I’m not sure,” answered the Colonel. “I believe I once paid your debts,
my boy. That’s always a bad sign.”

Jocelyn did not smile. “Taken in connection with the fact that I never
made any more,” he answered, “it certainly looks as if we were
threatened with softening of the brain.”

“And this settles it,” put in Claude, watching the fast disappearing
figures of Lionel and Miss Scott, who were already walking side by side
behind the two girls.

“It’s a safe and harmless madness, at all events,” laughed Anne
Trevelyan, who was close behind Jocelyn and looking over his shoulder.

But the surprise of the party in the mess-room was nothing to the
amazement of Evelyn and Gwendolen, who could not believe their eyes and
ears. Their taste for forbidden amusements and sports, and their
intimate alliance and mutual trust during a long career of domestic
crime, had given them an almost superhuman power of concealing their
emotions at the most exciting moments. When they saw that Lionel was
coming with them, they behaved as naturally as if it were an everyday
occurrence; but as soon as they were half a dozen paces in front of the
other two they exchanged glances of intelligence and suspicion, though
Evelyn only said in an unnecessarily loud tone that it was “a capital
day for a walk,” and Gwendolen answered that it was “ripping.” They
remembered that they had more than once derived great advantage from not
altogether dissimilar circumstances; for although none of their brothers
had exhibited such barefaced effrontery as to go to walk with them and
the governess of the moment, nevertheless it had often happened that
their former tormentors had disappeared from the schoolroom, or during
the afternoon, for as much as an hour at a time, during which the girls
left undone those things which they ought to have done and did a variety
of other things instead.

On the present occasion they were surprised, but they never lost their
nerve, and by the time they were six paces in front they were both
already intent on devising means for increasing the distance to a
quarter of a mile. Having been allowed to lead the way, it was natural
that they should take the direction of the moor, where escape would be
easy and pursuit difficult; besides, once there, it was easy to pretend
that there was a cat in sight, and a cat on a grouse moor is anathema
maranatha, with a price on its head, and to chivvy it is a worthy action
in the eyes of all sportsmen. Cats were scarce, it was true, but Lionel
and Miss Scott would be talking together, and how could either of them
swear that there was no cat? As a preliminary measure, the two increased
their speed at the first hill, and Lionel, who was in extreme haste to
ask questions of his companion, refused to walk any faster than before.
In a few moments, Evelyn and Gwendolen, though well in sight, were out
of earshot.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you had had an accident?” asked Lionel in a
low tone.

“Because it would not have been true,” answered Miss Scott, limping
along beside him.

“But you are lame,” objected Lionel.

“Very!”

“And you’ve got one shoulder higher than the other.”

“It’s quite noticeable, isn’t it?”

“And your figure and your complexion----”

“Awful, aren’t they? I suppose I’m absolutely repulsive, am I not?”

The girls were forging steadily ahead.

“No, dear, you never could be that to me,” answered Lionel earnestly.
“I’m very anxious about you, that’s all.”

“There’s really no cause for anxiety, I assure you.”

“But if you have not had an accident you must at least have been very
ill?”

“Oh, no,” answered Miss Scott in an indifferent tone; “only a little
influenza since I saw you two months ago. I don’t call that an illness,
you know.”

“I’m not sure,” answered Lionel very gravely. “I’ve often heard that the
influenza may have very serious consequences. I call being lame quite
serious enough.”

“I daresay it will get better,” said Miss Scott cheerfully. “I am quite
sure that this kind of lameness can be cured. I’m sorry to have given
you such an unpleasant impression.”

“Painful would be a better word,” said Lionel. “I never had such a shock
in my life as when you came into the breakfast-room this morning.”

“Yes, I saw. I suppose I had not realised how changed I am.”

“If you would only do your hair as you used to,” Lionel said, “it would
be better. Why in the world have you taken to drawing it back in that
way?”

“Did you see your mother’s advertisement?” asked Miss Scott.

“No. What had that to do with the way you do your hair?”

Instead of answering, Miss Scott produced a small newspaper cutting,
which she had carried inside her glove with the evident intention of
showing it to him. He took it, read it, and slipped it into his pocket
with a rather harsh little laugh. “That was ingenious,” he said; “but
the idea that you, of all people, could ever fulfil such outrageous
conditions!”

“I’m perfectly satisfactory, you see. I fill the place very well, and
Lady Jane is kindness itself.”

“I suppose that hideous frock is also meant to enhance the effect?”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, indeed it does! Most decidedly! But I should have thought that
what has happened to you would have been quite enough to satisfy my
mother, without making it so much worse.”

By this time they were up on the moor, which began not more than half a
mile from the great house. As Lionel spoke the last words he looked
sadly at Miss Scott’s blotched face; but it hurt him to see it, and he
looked away at once, following his sisters’ movements with his eyes. At
that very moment he saw them both stoop suddenly to pick up stones from
the rough moorland road; having armed themselves, they dashed away like
greyhounds from the leash, straight across the moor, in a direction
which would soon take them out of sight in the hollow beyond. Miss Scott
was watching them too, and showed signs of wishing to give chase at
once, but Lionel stopped her.

“They’ve probably seen a cat,” he said quietly.

Miss Scott, who knew nothing about moors, did not understand.

“Cats kill the young birds,” Lionel explained. “The best thing we can
do is to sit down and wait. It won’t hurt them to have a good run.”

As Miss Scott sat down on a boulder by the roadside, he caught sight of
the thick sole of her right shoe for the first time. He had often seen
cripples wearing just such a shoe on one foot, and he started a little
and drew his breath sharply between his teeth as one does at a painful
sight. She understood, but was silent for a moment, though she instantly
drew back her foot under the edge of her tweed skirt.

“I was afraid it would make a dreadful difference to you,” she said,
“and I suppose I should never have let you see me like this.” He made a
quick movement. “No, dear,” she continued quietly, “I quite understand;
but I couldn’t resist the temptation to be near you.”

“Besides,” he answered, anxious to destroy the painful impression he
must have made on her, “you had written that you meant to come, if only
on trial. I thought it was a mad idea, but I found it just as impossible
to resist as you did, and I should have been awfully disappointed if you
had not come. Of course it would have been easier for me if I had
known--or if you had not done all you could to make it worse.”

She looked at him so steadily while he was speaking that he turned and
met her eyes; they seemed to be laughing, though her face was grave.

“I really couldn’t paint my cheek, could I?” she asked.

“Oh, no! I did not mean that.”

“But I have,” said Miss Scott with great gravity.

“What do you mean?” asked Lionel in amazement.

“I wash it off at night,” she answered. “It comes off quite easily.”

“What?” Lionel almost sprang to his feet. “Do you mean to say----”

“Yes,” answered Miss Scott, smiling. “I’ve made up for the part. It’s
well done, isn’t it? You know I belonged to the dramatic club at the
college, and they thought I was rather good at it. I always did the ugly
housemaids with colds in their heads and red noses.”

“Your nose too!”

“Yes, my nose too. The paint comes off my face; and this comes off.” She
stuck out the thick-soled shoe as she spoke. “And this comes off,” she
added, laying her hand on her shoulder and laughing. “And my figure is
just what it always was. Only my teeth and hair are real.”

At first Lionel stared at her with some alarm, as if he thought she
might be going out of her mind. But she only smiled and looked at him
quite quietly; and, now that he knew the truth, he saw the familiar face
that was dear to him as if it were not disfigured, and the sudden
understanding wrought such a quick revulsion in his feeling and so
greatly delighted his natural sense of humour, that he began to laugh
silently, as he sat leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, for he
had the grave disposition of a thoughtful scholar. But instead of
subsiding, his mirth grew by quick degrees, his shoulders shook, and his
face twisted till he felt as if his whole being were turning into one
vast joke; then, quite suddenly, he stuck out his feet in front of him,
leaned back, threw up his head, and broke into a peal of such ringing
laughter as the silent moor had never heard before. And Ellen Scott,
who had been dying to laugh for ten days, could not help joining him
now, though in a much more musical and pretty fashion; so there the
lovers sat on the boulder, side by side, laughing like a pair of
lunatics.

The air was bright and still, as it can be in the North of England when
the winter is just over and the earth is beginning to wake again, and to
dream of her returning loveliness, as a beautiful woman may who has long
lain ill in a darkened room. The clear laughter of the two echoed far
and wide, even down to the stream in the hollow, where the girls were
poking sticks under the big stones at one end of the pool to drive the
speckled trout out of their quiet lurking-places; and they were talking
in low tones and plotting to hide some fishing-tackle

[Illustration:

     “Such ringing laughter as the silent moor had never heard before.”
]

out of sight near by, on the mere chance that they might before long get
an hour’s fishing while Lionel would be talking to Miss Scott. But the
instant they heard the far-off sound of mirth overhead, they ran up the
slope again, and dropped to the ground just behind a long familiar bunch
of gorse, whence they could watch the road unobserved. The manœuvre was
executed with a skill that would have done credit to a head stalker.

Lionel and Miss Scott were still laughing, but had reached the milder
stage of mirth which is like the after-taste of very dry champagne. They
were looking at each other, and it was quite evident to the experienced
eyes that watched them through the gorse that they were holding hands,
though the hands that were joined were not visible, but were held low
down between them, pressing the boulder on which they sat.

The two girls saw, understood, and rejoiced. They had firmly believed
that never, under any conceivable circumstances, could any male being
even think of holding Miss Scott’s hand; but the impossibility was an
accomplished fact before their eyes, and as they could not have any
reason for supposing that the two had ever met before, they both
instantly concluded that it was a case of love at first sight. Then they
looked at each other and they also laughed long and heartily, though not
a sound disturbed the air. When the fit was over, they whispered
together.

“I think it’s going to be all right,” said Evelyn, keeping her eye on
the couple.

“I’m jolly glad,” whispered Gwendolen. “I thought we were in for it this
time.”

“The last ten days have been awful,” said Evelyn, “haven’t they?”

“She’s a perfect demon,” replied the other. “I wish I knew some nice bad
words for her, that it wouldn’t be wrong or low-down form to say!”

“I’ve seen things in Shakespeare,” said Evelyn thoughtfully, “but I’m
not quite sure what they mean.”

“You can think them anyway,” suggested Gwendolen--“that’s better than
nothing; and you’ll show them to me when we get home, and I can think
them too. There can’t be anything wrong about that, can there?”

“I don’t think so,” answered Evelyn; “and we’ll never ask anybody, so we
can always think that the words are all right.”

“Do you suppose he’ll kiss her?” asked Gwendolen.

“Not to-day,” answered Evelyn, with the superior wisdom of an elder
sister. “They never do the first day; and besides, he’s sitting on the
side that has the blotch.”

“Well, then,” said Gwendolen, who had a more practical mind, “if there’s
not going to be anything more to see, and as we can’t hear what they are
saying, let’s go back and tickle the trout!”

Evelyn at once recognised that this was sound counsel, and with the
unanimity which characterised all their actions, the two crept backwards
till they were below the brow of the knoll, and then rose to their feet
and trotted down to the pool again in great gladness of heart.

“How long do you think you can keep it up?” Lionel asked at last. “It’s
utterly amusing and delightful, but I think it is just a little
dangerous for you.”

“At the first sight of danger I shall disappear into space,” answered
Miss Scott. “But I have a little plan of my own,” she added, “which I
mean to carry out if I can.”

“What is it?”

“It will succeed better if I keep you in the dark,” she answered. “In
the meantime give me some work to do for you in the evenings--copying or
looking up things. That will account for your talking to me sometimes,
don’t you see?”




CHAPTER IV


Lionel had first known Ellen Scott while she was still a student at the
college and was at home during the vacation. It happened in this way.
Old Herbert Scott was one of the many learned and industrious, but quite
obscure men whose ceaseless industry under the direction of half a dozen
distinguished personages makes the British Museum the greatest
institution of its kind. He was not a scholar in the ordinary sense of
the word, for he had no degree, and had never been at a University. The
son of an English officer in the native Indian army, who had been killed
at the siege of Kabul, he had obtained a post in the Customs of Bombay.
Though he possessed little or no knowledge of the Classics at that time,
he soon became known for his extraordinary proficiency in Mahratta and
the kindred dialects. He was, in fact, a natural philologian, and soon
advanced himself to the study of Sanskrit. His misfortune was that the
subject interested him far more than any material advantage which he
might have obtained by mastering it. There is plenty of lucrative
employment in India for men who know Sanskrit and have a dozen modern
dialects thoroughly well, and who can be trusted; but Herbert Scott
cared for nothing but study, and at the age of thirty-two he was as
inefficient in the performance of his professional duties as he was
learned in the Vedas and the lore of the Brahmans; in fact, he was in
danger of losing his means of livelihood, since the Customs were not
included in the “covenanted” Indian Civil Service. Happily for him, he
was discovered at this time by one of the lights of English learning,
who instantly recognised in him the talents and qualities of one who
would always be far more useful to others than to himself. He gladly
accepted the honourable though modestly paid situation which was offered
him in the British Museum--for the twenty-four-year rule had not been
invented then; he returned to England, installed himself economically in
the cheapest part of Kensington, and went to work.

A good many years passed before Lionel Follitt made his acquaintance in
the Museum, and became indebted to him for invaluable assistance. The
extraordinary extent and variety of his learning attracted and
interested the young man, who at first had him to dinner at a Club, and
soon afterwards proposed to go and see him in Kensington on a Sunday.
Mr. Scott seemed pleased. Lionel kept the appointment he had made, and
was considerably surprised to find his learned friend in conversation
with a pretty and charming young girl.

“My daughter Ellen,” Herbert Scott had said, introducing his visitor.

Ellen had made them tea, had seen that they had everything they wanted,
and had then discreetly withdrawn, leaving them to the discussion of
Sanskrit literature.

The rest needs little explanation. The girl was vastly more to Lionel’s
taste than any of those he met in his own set: she was modest without
being shy, she was clever without ostentation, she could appreciate
without flattering, and she could understand without being vain of her
wits. Moreover, though she was not more than pretty so far as features
went, she had a lovely complexion, nice brown eyes that sparkled when
she was amused, soft wavy hair of no particular colour, and a figure
which Lionel thought the most beautiful he had ever seen.

After this first meeting his visits to the British Museum were more
frequent, and though his own industry did not relax and his learning
profited considerably by them, he often found time to go with Mr.
Herbert Scott to Kensington after hours, and even to stay to tea and
spend the evening with the father and daughter.

The old Indian knew nothing of Lionel’s position in the world, beyond
the fact that he was a quiet young gentleman who lived in the country
with his parents, and he would have been a good deal surprised to learn
that his studious friend was heir to a noble old estate in Yorkshire. It
was soon apparent that the two young people liked each other very much,
but Lionel inspired confidence, and the young girl had plenty of common
sense; and if the young gentleman from the country took it into his head
to marry the daughter of the penniless old student, so much the better.
If anything happened to her father she would have to support herself,
and as he could not hope to provide for her he had given her the best
education that could be had in England. If she did not marry and was
left alone in the world, she was at least fit for any employment that
might offer.

Herbert Scott had no great knowledge of human nature, but as months went
by, and visits followed visits, he became convinced that there was an
understanding between the two, and his hopes increased; yet it was not
until Ellen informed him of her intention to accept the position of
governess in Lionel’s family that her father ventured to ask her a
direct question.

“Yes,” she said, “I have promised to marry him if his people do not
object to me. That will be the difficulty, especially with his mother,
who wishes him to marry well. He has not spoken of me at home yet. My
plan is to make his mother like me before she has any idea of the truth.
Do you think there is anything wrong in that?”

“No,” answered Herbert Scott, to whose Anglo-Indian mind anything
appealed that had a touch of adventure in it. “But does he know
everything? Have you told him?”

“Yes, I have told him.”

But when Mr. Scott had gone with Ellen to the station, she had been
quite herself in appearance, and he would have been much surprised if he
had seen her when she walked into Lady Jane’s morning room. The disguise
was a part of her little plan which she had not confided to him, any
more than she had shown him the singularly uninviting advertisement she
had answered. She had timed her journey so as to spend the night in
York; she had arrived at the hotel in a long cloak and wearing a veil,
and had gone to her room at once, and no one had been surprised at the
appearance she presented when she came down for breakfast in the
morning. As a matter of fact, she had got the idea of making the change
in that way from the account of a celebrated robbery committed by a
woman, which she had read in a newspaper.

On the evening after Lionel’s memorable walk with Miss Scott, Anne
Trevelyan asked him whether he had found the new governess a pleasant
companion, whereat the Colonel smiled pleasantly, and Lady Jane and the
others laughed; but Lionel was not in the least disturbed.

“I was very much surprised when I saw her this morning,” he replied,
truthful to the letter, if not in the spirit--for his amazement had been
great. “I know her. She is the daughter of old Herbert Scott of the
British Museum, who has helped me a great deal with my work. So I went
to walk with her, and we renewed our acquaintance.”

Every one seemed disappointed, for the chance of chaffing the least
chaffable member of the family had seemed unique. But now everything
was explained in the dullest possible manner.

“Oh!” ejaculated Anne Trevelyan.

“Fault!” cried the Colonel, who was fond of tennis.

“Punctured!” observed Lady Jane, who motored.

“Crab!” was Jocelyn’s observation, as he looked across the table at Miss
Trevelyan, for he was the oarsman of the family.

“Hit to leg for six,” remarked Claude, who was the cricketer.

After this no one thought it strange that Lionel should treat the
governess with great friendliness, and as the Follitts were all
kind-hearted people, no allusions were made to her undesirable
appearance.

On the contrary, it occurred to Lady Jane before long that the poor girl
might really make some improvement in her looks without endangering her
ladyship’s peace of mind. Miss Scott was turning out to be so thoroughly
satisfactory, and “knew her place so well,” that Lady Jane’s heart was
softened. “I am sure you won’t mind my speaking of a rather delicate
matter,” she said one morning, when she chanced to be alone with Miss
Scott for a few moments. “I should certainly not mention it if I did not
hope that you will stay till the girls are grown up.”

“I will stay as long as I can,” answered Miss Scott demurely. “You are
all very kind to me, and I am very happy here.”

“That’s very nice, and I am sure you won’t be offended if a much older
woman gives you a little piece of advice.”

“Oh, not at all! I should be most grateful.”

[Illustration: “‘The truth is,’ answered Lady Jane, ‘it’s about your
hair.’”]

“The truth is,” answered Lady Jane, “it’s about your hair. Are
you sure you don’t mind? Don’t you think that perhaps, if you
did not draw it back so very tight, it might look--er--a little
less--er--unprepossessing?”

“It’s so easy to do it in this way,” answered Miss Scott, and she made
her right eye wander rather wildly, for that was one of the tricks she
had learnt in amateur theatricals. “But I shall be only too happy to try
something else, if you do not think it would seem ridiculous.”

“I’m sure you needn’t be afraid of that,” said Lady Jane; “and besides,
no one else will notice it, you know. I mean,” she added, not wishing to
seem unkind, “I mean that no one will care, you know, except me, and I
should like you to look--er--a little more like other people.”

“I quite understand,” answered Miss Scott; “I’ll do my best. But I ought
to tell you that when my hair isn’t pulled straight back, it’s wavy.”

“All the better,” answered Lady Jane, with satisfaction. “That will be
very nice.”

She had really felt that, in spite of Miss Scott’s admirable qualities,
she was almost too hideous to be seen in town with two very smart girls.
She might perhaps be taken for a maid.

As I have said, Ellen had nice wavy hair, though it was of no particular
colour, and when she came down to breakfast the next morning, having
arranged it as she did at home, the change in her appearance was
surprising. She still had a red nose, a blotched cheek, and a bump on
her shoulder, and she limped; but she no longer looked like a skinned
rabbit. Evelyn and Gwendolen exchanged glances, and said in their evil
hearts that the change was a step in the right direction, since it must
be intended to please Lionel. Lady Jane smiled at her and nodded
approvingly, but her prediction proved to be well founded, for neither
the Colonel, nor Jocelyn, nor Claude, nor any one of the three
Trevelyans, even glanced at the governess. And she had managed to tell
Lionel of the advice his mother had given her, so that he showed no
surprise.

On that day and the next, a large party of people came for the week-end,
and when the house was full the governess and the girls had all their
meals apart in the regions of the schoolroom, visited only by Lady Jane
and occasionally by Lionel.

But he was obliged to be a good deal with the others, and incidentally
with Miss Trevelyan. He was the last man in the world to fancy that a
woman was falling in love with him merely because she always seemed glad
to talk with him, and he was inclined to resent the way in which his
mother did her best to bring him and Anne together at all times; but
when there was a large party he preferred the society of the few whom he
knew more or less intimately to the conversation of those whom he rarely
met more than three or four times in a year, and had sometimes never met
at all--for in London he avoided the crowd as much as he could. The
consequence was that, on the present occasion, Anne saw much more of him
than when the Trevelyans had been the only people stopping at the house.

If he had been wise in the ways of the world he would have known that
when a woman has a fancy for a man she talks to him about herself, or
himself, and has little to say about any one else; and he would have
observed before now that Miss Trevelyan asked questions and led the
conversation from general subjects to people. She seemed more interested
in his brothers than in him, and particularly in Jocelyn--though she
actually treated the latter with more coldness, or less cordiality, than
the others.

“He has no ambition,” she said to Lionel. “I wish he would go in for
ballooning!”

Lionel smiled a little. They were strolling along a path on the
outskirts of the park, near the Malton road.

“I hadn’t associated ballooning with ambition before,” he answered, “but
I daresay that if you suggested it as a career, he might take a fancy to
it.”

“Not much!” answered Miss Anne, in a tone of conviction. “That would be
just the way to make him do the opposite.”

“I doubt that. But do you mind telling me what the opposite of
ballooning would be? Diving, I suppose, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t be horrid! You know what I mean.”

Lionel did not know, but she had never before shown so clearly what she
thought about Jocelyn’s opinion of her. Lionel was interested, and
thought he knew her well enough to ask a direct question.

“You like Jocelyn, don’t you?” He looked at her quietly.

“Do you mind?” inquired Anne, with a short laugh.

“Not a bit. But, as a matter of fact, my mother has got it into her head
that it’s your duty to like me.” He laughed too.

“You’re a very calm person.”

“I didn’t mean to be cheeky,” answered Lionel. “But as we are very good
friends, and seem to be expected to fall in love with each other, though
we never shall, it’s just as well to be frank, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I was only chaffing. You’re quite right.”

“Very well. Then you won’t mind if I tell you just what I think. You
like Jocelyn, and you are quite sure he does not care for you. Is that
it?”

Anne Trevelyan did not answer for a moment, and there was a little more
colour in her handsome face. “Yes,” she said, after a few seconds.
“That’s it. Rather humiliating, isn’t it? All the same, I would rather
that you should know.”

“Thank you. But you don’t give him much encouragement to be nice to you,
do you?”

“Well, hardly!” answered Anne, holding up her head. “I don’t think it
would be very nice if I did, considering that he evidently dislikes me.”

“You’re quite mistaken,” said Lionel in a tone of certainty. “If you did
not pretend to ignore him half the time, as you do, you would soon find
it out.”

“Nonsense! You might as well say that he likes that dreadful governess!”

“I don’t think Miss Scott at all dreadful,” answered Lionel, in a tone
that made his companion look at him quickly. “Her looks are against her,
I admit, but I assure you she is a very nice girl.”

“I was only thinking of her looks, of course. And I forgot that you knew
her father. What did you say he was?”

She asked the question in a tone of real interest, which was intended as
a sort of

[Illustration:

     “‘I don’t think Miss Scott at all dreadful,’ answered Lionel.”
]

apology for having said anything against the governess.

“He’s in the British Museum; but he is not really her father. He adopted
her and brought her up, that’s all. She was left on his doorstep, I
believe.”

“Really! How interesting! Do tell me all about it.”

“There’s not very much to tell,” said Lionel. “Herbert Scott has been in
the Museum five-and-twenty years, I believe, and has always lived in the
same little house in Kensington. He began life in India, and I fancy he
must be almost sixty. One morning, about twenty-two years ago, he was
lying awake at dawn, when he heard a child crying just under his window.
At first he paid no attention to the sound, but as it went on
persistently, he went down and opened the door. He found a little girl
baby, nicely dressed and quite clean, lying on the doorstep, kicking and
screaming. He thought the baby might be about a year old. That’s the
story.”

“Except the rest of it,” observed Miss Trevelyan. “The interesting thing
would be to know what he did with it--a man living alone, and who had
probably never touched a baby in his life!”

“He went to the police and made inquiries, and advertised, but as he
could not get any information, and the woman servant he had was a
respectable middle-aged widow who was fond of children, they kept it and
brought it up. That’s all I know.”

“I have heard of such things before,” said Anne Trevelyan thoughtfully.
“The child must have been kidnapped by thieves who tried to get a ransom
and failed.”

“Or gipsies,” suggested Lionel.

“No, not gipsies. They hardly ever give up a child they have stolen,
unless they are in danger of being caught; and if that had been the case
in your story, the child’s parents would probably have claimed it, for
they would have been employing detectives, and the police would have
been informed. I should think the baby Mr. Scott found must have been an
orphan in charge of some relations who were glad to get rid of it.”

“That certainly sounds likely,” answered Lionel. “I think it will be
better not to speak about it to my mother or the others. I’m not quite
sure why I’ve told you.”

“You told me because I called Miss Scott dreadful. I am sorry I did. I
won’t do it again.”

“That’s all right--you didn’t mean it. We were talking about Jocelyn, I
remember. I never understand how women do their thinking, and I suppose
that I am not curious enough to study them.”

“What has that to do with anything?” asked Miss Trevelyan quickly.

“I was only wondering why, since you like Jocelyn, you are always as
disagreeable as possible to him and as nice as possible to me.”

Miss Trevelyan laughed and looked away from him. “Of course you don’t
understand!” she said. “Men never do.”

“I’ll give you a piece of advice, Miss Anne. The next time you make an
ascent, make Jocelyn go with you, and see what happens.”

“Nothing would induce him to go, I am sure.”

“I think I could manage it, if you will only ask him.”

“I’ll take odds that you can’t,” declared Miss Anne emphatically.

“Six to four,” offered Lionel, who was not a Follitt for nothing.

“Two to one would be more like it,” proposed the young lady. “I only
mean sovereigns, of course. I’m not on the make.”

“Done!” answered Lionel promptly. “I wish it were thousands!”

“Well, it’s in your stable!” laughed Miss Anne, who seemed pleased, “and
I suppose you know what you can do.”

“There’s only one condition. You must ask him before me.”

“All right.”




CHAPTER V


The interview which was the consequence of Miss Trevelyan’s bet took
place the following morning, in the presence of most of the family. As
has been said, the Trevelyans had the privilege of the mess-room when
the house was full; and as Anne was very much in earnest, she found her
way there after breakfast, when she was sure Jocelyn and his brothers
would be together. She was not disappointed. They were scattered about
the big room when she came in, and the Colonel was writing a note at his
little desk before the window.

Lionel guessed why she had come, and gave her a lead at once. He had the
morning paper in his hand.

“Have you seen this?” he asked, looking at her directly. “There’s been
another of those awful motor accidents. The thing ran away, and caught
fire, and was smashed by an express train. Frightful, isn’t it!”

“Anybody we know?” asked Miss Anne, coming up to him.

“Nothing particular was found of the people,” he answered; “but there
seems to be an idea that they were foreign tourists. It’s one to you,
Miss Anne. No one ever seems to get killed in a balloon, unless they go
to the North Pole.”

“Ballooning is no more dangerous than football,” answered Miss
Trevelyan, turning her back to the fireplace and looking round the room.
“You get rather bumped about sometimes, in coming down, but that’s all.
Why don’t you try it?”

She looked about her vaguely.

“Is that meant for me?” inquired Lionel.

“It’s meant for anybody who will come with me next time.”

The brothers had dropped their newspapers and were listening, and the
Colonel had turned in his seat, after finishing his note, and was
looking at her.

“We can’t all go,” observed Claude.

“And as I have no time for that sort of thing,” said Lionel, “the choice
is not large, for I don’t suppose the Governor is going in for
aeronautics.”

“Why not?” asked the Colonel, perennially young.

“I wonder what the Lady would say?” laughed Claude.

“Of course my brother will go with us, so it will be quite proper,” said
Miss Anne coolly.

“The Governor is welcome to my place,” said Claude. “I’ve promised to
ride a steeplechase next month, and I’m not very keen about breaking any
bones before it comes off.”

“That narrows the invitation to the Governor and Jocelyn,” observed
Lionel, “and I’ll lay odds that the Governor will be the only one of the
family who will accept.”

“What odds?” inquired Jocelyn, who had not spoken yet.

“Oh, anything,” laughed Lionel. “Five to one if you like.”

“Tens?” Jocelyn asked.

“Yes; I’ll go fifty against it.”

“Done!” answered Jocelyn promptly, for he was hard up, and Lionel knew
it.

“Will you really come?” asked Anne, affecting cold surprise.

“Rather!”

“Jocelyn was always a sordid beast,” observed Claude in a brotherly
manner. “He’d sell his soul for fifty pounds.”

But Jocelyn remained unmoved. “I don’t know about my soul,” he answered,
“but you may have the brown filly at the price.”

“That imp of Satan? Not much!”

Jocelyn made no answer to Claude’s disparaging remark about the filly,
but turned to Miss Trevelyan in a businesslike manner.

“When is it to be, and where?” he asked.

“We’ll make the usual start,” Anne answered. “But we shall have to wait
till Bob’s wrist is all right again.”

“He isn’t wearing it in a sling any more,” said Jocelyn, who, for
reasons of his own, was in a hurry to win his brother’s money.

“Call it three weeks from Monday,” said Anne, after a moment’s thought,
during which she had mentally run over the list of her numerous
engagements. “I’ll let you know the hour. We’ll start no matter what the
weather is, of course. We always do.”

So the matter was settled much more easily than she had anticipated, and
she was proportionately grateful to Lionel for making her lose her own
small bet.

“You’ll be forty-nine sovereigns to the bad,” she said with a pleasant
smile as she paid it, “and it’s rather a shady transaction, I suppose.
But I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

“That’s all right.”

Lionel reflected on human nature afterwards, and more particularly on
the ways of young women; but it is due to him and to Anne Trevelyan to
say that he did not like her any the less for what she had done. On the
contrary, he would cheerfully have made a larger sacrifice to see her
married to his brother, since that happy result would effectually put an
end to his mother’s plans for his future bliss.

During the remaining three days of the Trevelyans’ visit, after the
house-party had scattered, he already had reason to congratulate himself
on his investment. The singular transaction which had taken place in the
mess-room had broken the ice between Anne and Jocelyn, and for the first
time in their acquaintance they were seen talking together apart from
the others. At dinner, too, they exchanged remarks, and judging from
what they said the rest of the party might have supposed that their
conversation consisted chiefly in making satirical observations on each
other’s personal tastes; but now and then, when Jocelyn said something
particularly disagreeable, Anne laughed cheerfully, as though she liked
it, and when she returned the thrust with interest Jocelyn’s large
good-natured mouth twitched a little and then smiled. They acted like a
couple of healthy terrier puppies, whose idea of a good game is to bite
each other in the back of the neck and catch each other by the hind leg,
and then to rush wildly off in opposite directions, only to turn back
the next moment and go at each other again, with furious barking and
showing of young teeth, which is all a part of the fun. It would be
beneath their dignity as fighting dogs not to pretend to fight each
other when no sworn enemy is about; but it would be against the laws of
puppy honour to do each other any real harm.

Lionel saw and understood, and so did quiet little Mrs. Trevelyan; but
the Colonel could not make out what was going on, for he was a mild man
who had inherited the sentiments of the Victorian age, and only
recognised that he was growing old because he felt that his own methods
of being agreeable in the eyes of women were antiquated.

As for Lady Jane, she was not at all disturbed, for Lionel and Anne were
as good friends as ever, and were, in fact, more intimate since they had
entered into an offensive and defensive alliance. Besides, the presence
of the undesirable governess had contributed greatly to her peace of
mind. Her gratitude had already shown itself in the advice she had given
Miss Scott as to arranging her hair, and the effect was so good that she
contemplated some further improvements. What made the governess look
like a housemaid, though it was clear that she was a lady, was her red
nose and the blotch. A lady might limp and have a bad figure, and even
be a little crooked, but a red nose was distinctly plebeian in Lady
Jane’s code, and blotches were a somewhat repulsive disfigurement. She
was really kind-hearted, but she knew that she was not always tactful,
and it was with some trepidation that she approached the subject, having
summoned Miss Scott to her morning room to ask whether the girls were
doing well at their lessons.

“You are really quite wonderful,” said Lady Jane, when the governess
assured her that Evelyn now really understood that Henry V. of England
did not fight for the French crown on the ground that he was the son of
Henry IV. of France, and that Gwendolen had remembered “nine times
eight” for three whole days. “And are you quite sure,” Lady Jane asked,
“that you wish to stay with us? Does the air here--er--quite agree with
you?”

“Oh, yes, indeed!” answered Miss Scott, with alacrity; “besides, I
should be perfectly well anywhere.”

“Because I sometimes think that, perhaps, your circulation is not as
good as it might be.”

“Really?” cried Miss Scott, very much surprised, for she had not the
faintest idea what Lady Jane was driving at. “I never thought of my
circulation.”

Lady Jane hesitated, and looked at her, not without a certain motherly
kindness. “I’ve noticed,” she said, looking away again, “that you
sometimes have--er--in fact, always since I have known you, a
slight--er--redness.”

“Oh, yes, I know,” answered Miss Scott, with a very slight tremor in
her voice, which was really due to the fact that she felt the warning
symptoms of coming laughter.

But Lady Jane was afraid that she had touched a sensitive spot, and had
given pain. However, she was in for it now.

“Please don’t think me meddlesome,” she said gently; “but I really know
that those little things generally come from a bad circulation, and can
be very much improved, if not quite cured, by diet and by taking the
right sort of exercise.”

“I’m afraid my nose isn’t that kind,” answered Miss Scott with
difficulty, for she could scarcely speak.

“Perhaps not. But Sir Jasper Threlfall is coming next week, and he is
such a great authority, you know. I am sure he would be willing--if you
don’t mind too much----”

When Miss Scott understood she started in real fright. “Oh, please,
please! I’ll do anything you like, but please don’t ask me to see a
doctor!”

There was no mistaking her real distress now, and Lady Jane felt that it
was impossible to insist.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but of course, if you feel so strongly about it,
I won’t say anything more. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind very much trying
some stuff I always use myself if I happen to get burnt by the wind when
motoring. It’s not at all nasty, you know--in fact, it’s rather nice,
and it’s very soothing. Will you let me send a bottle to your room? I
always keep a supply.”

“It’s most kind of you, I am sure,” answered Ellen, immensely relieved.
“I can’t tell you how I dread seeing a doctor! If you will only tell me
just what to do, I shall be very grateful.”

Lady Jane’s lotion for the face was a marvellous compound. Judging from
the short, but imposing, statement set forth on the neat Parisian label,
it was the highest achievement of two famous French chemists in
collaboration with an ancient and celebrated manufactory of perfumery in
the Rue de Rivoli. Miss Scott, who was strictly truthful, said that she
used it conscientiously, and so she did; but she did not add that she
had another little bottle of her own, the contents of which she applied
with equal regularity to her nose and her cheek during at least a week
after her interview with Lady Jane. When the lotion was almost finished,
however, a marked improvement was visible. Her nose was still as red as
ever, but the disfiguring blotch grew rapidly smaller and paler. Lady
Jane was delighted, but, with the exception of Lionel, the men of the
family were so thoroughly convinced that poor Miss Scott was a dreadful
sight, that they did not notice the change at all, while Lady Jane’s
interest in the cure she was effecting steadily increased. It is well
known that a red nose is even harder to cure than a bad complexion, but
she did not lose heart. Bottle after bottle of the wonderful lotion was
sent to the governess’s room, and Lady Jane was soon obliged to order a
fresh supply from Paris. Her maid, who had been the first to discover
that Ellen was a perfect lady, took a lively interest in the cure.

“It’s a wonderful change for the better, miss, if I may say so,” she
said, “and it’s a mercy that her ladyship happens to use the lotion, for
I must say she never needed it

[Illustration: “‘You mark my words, miss. The Lord knoweth his own.’”]

in her life. But the Lord knoweth His own, miss, and Providence never
meant that your sweet face should be spoilt by an ugly patch.”

The maid was pious, and had reached that age at which piety has some
chance of being permanent.

“It’s very nice of you to take so much interest,” answered Ellen, in the
tone which had won the humbler part of the household from the first.

“And pray who wouldn’t?” inquired the excellent woman. “Mark my words,
miss,” she added, as she went out, “the Lord knoweth His own.”

Lionel was in the secret, of course, and watched the cure with secret
delight and amusement. Evelyn and Gwendolen also noticed the change, and
understood perfectly well that if the governess’s nose paled to a
natural colour, she would be decidedly pretty, which was a consummation
they devoutly wished. They were uncommonly good judges in those matters
too, for they had long ago discovered that the amount of liberty they
enjoyed was in direct proportion to the good looks of their governess
for the time being, though the length of her stay with them was always
inversely as her prettiness. Now Miss Scott had at first been terrible
to them; but since she was going to be pretty, one of two things was
sure to happen. If she stayed, their brothers would make claims upon her
time out of school hours, which would leave them free to follow their
own devices; but if she grew too pretty she would be sent away, and the
two girls were quite sure that such another terror to their liberty
could not be found in the three kingdoms, and that any change must be
for the better.

At this stage in the cure of her complexion the governess’s lameness
diminished perceptibly, and Lady Jane’s sympathetic maid was sure that
the misshapen shoulder was less apparent than before.

“If this goes on,” said Evelyn to her sister in the privacy of their own
room, “she won’t stay long.”

“She says the air’s good for her,” answered Gwendolen cheerfully. “I saw
Claude staring at her yesterday. He had such a funny look.”

“I know,” answered Evelyn wisely. “That’s always what they call the
beginning of the end. I hope we shall have as long a holiday as last
time.”

“We’ll have some jolly fishing,” said Gwendolen. “I’ll bet there are
heaps of worms in the old corner by the rose bush now, for we haven’t
disturbed them for a long time.”

“There are heaps of things I want to do,” rejoined the elder girl in a
musing tone. “The men are quite right, you know: fishing with worms
isn’t at all sporting. The real thing is a fly.”

“But we’ve got no tackle for that,” objected the junior partner. “I
don’t see what we can do.”

“We’ll cabbage it.”

This well-known method of obtaining supplies of all sorts was familiar
to Gwendolen, and she nodded gravely.

“There’s another thing I must do,” she said.

“I know,” Evelyn said quickly: “it’s the brown filly Jocelyn bought last
month. I want to ride her too. We’ll toss up for the first mount, as we
always do.”

“I was thinking,” suggested the enterprising Gwendolen, “that if we
could manage to get her and Charley’s Aunt out at the same time, when
the men are at dinner, we could have a real steeplechase, straight
across the park to the King’s Oak and back to the stables again.”

“That’s an idea. Wouldn’t they be horrified? They’d say it was awfully
dangerous, in and out through the trees!”

“Oh, well,” answered Gwendolen philosophically, “you can only break your
neck once, you know.”

It soon began to look as if these delightful dreams were to be realised,
for Miss Scott’s appearance improved at an almost phenomenal rate. She
was so much better that she was able to put another shoe on her right
foot, and the sole was not really very much thicker than the other. She
had confessed to Lady Jane that she had not always been lame. It had
come upon her very suddenly one day, and she thought that the regular
exercise with the girls had done her good; which was doubtless true,
though it might be considered to be an independent proposition. Lady
Jane was glad, because a lame governess always attracts attention, and
that is just what a governess should not do. The good lady now conceived
the idea of improving that poor Miss Scott’s looks still further, by
suggesting that she should put a little stuffing on the shoulder that
was lower than the other. Ellen said she could do it herself, and she
produced the desired effect, not by the means suggested, but by reducing
the hump itself a very little, and afterwards a little more. At the same
time, by some art she had doubtless learned in amateur theatricals, her
clothes began to fit her better, until one day the Colonel came upon her
accidentally when she was getting a book in the library, standing on
tiptoe and raising both her hands to reach a high shelf, a position
which is usually trying to awkwardly made young women; and it suddenly
occurred to the still susceptible father of all the Follitts that poor
Miss Scott’s figure was not really so bad after all.

“Won’t you let me help you?” he asked, approaching her of his own accord
for the first time since she had been in the house. “What book are you
looking for?”

“Oh, thank you,” Ellen answered, dropping her hands and colouring
slightly, though merely from surprise. “If you would--it’s the first
volume of Macaulay’s History. I’m just too short to reach it.”

The Colonel was close to her now, and was looking at her curiously, but
not without admiration. He had been vaguely aware for some time past
that her complexion had improved, but with him the habit of not looking
at a plain young woman was very strong. What he now saw was a complete
surprise. Poor Miss Scott’s complexion was as clear and radiant as that
of the girls themselves, her brown eyes were bright and soft, and though
her thick hair was of no particular colour, it waved charmingly.

All this was so unexpected that Colonel Follitt positively stared at
her, though quite unconsciously. But Ellen understood, and was not
offended, though she turned to the books again to avoid his gaze. He was
at once conscious of his own rudeness, and feared that he had made a bad
impression, so he lost no time in getting down the volume that was just
out of her reach.

By way of prolonging the interview, however, he made a great show of
dusting it, debating meanwhile whether it would be safe and wise to
offer a little apology.

“I really didn’t mean to be rude just now,” he said with much humility,
as he handed her the history. “Our Yorkshire air is doing you a lot of
good, isn’t it?”

Miss Scott smiled pleasantly, and might have made some answer, but at
that moment Jocelyn entered through the open door, and saw the two
standing close together in the bright light, directly before him. He
suppressed an exclamation of surprise. It was not the first time that he
had come upon his young-hearted parent in pleasant conversation with a
pretty governess, but it was certainly the first time that he had
thought Miss Scott in the least good-looking; for he had inherited his
father’s knack of keeping his eyes off such unpleasing sights as red
noses and blotched cheeks. Besides, he had in reality been too much
occupied of late in admiring Anne Trevelyan to pay any attention to
governesses. What he felt now was genuine surprise and nothing else, and
he at once came nearer in order to inspect the phenomenon. His impassive
face did not betray his thoughts. By the time he was close to the
Colonel he had made sure that Miss Scott was really transformed from
almost repulsive ugliness to undeniable prettiness, and he merely asked
his father an unimportant question about the stables, and added that he
had come to hunt up the pedigree of a certain Derby winner about which
there had been a discussion in the mess-room after breakfast. For the
library at King’s Follitt contained a noble collection of turf annals.

But the Colonel’s own mind was a perfect encyclopædia of such
information, and

[Illustration: “‘Where are the girls?’ she inquired, in a frigid
tone.”]

before his son moved to get the volume, he was already running off the
pedigree in question as glibly as a quick schoolboy would say the
multiplication table.

And now another thing happened; for coincidences, like misfortunes, do
not often come singly. Lady Jane herself made her appearance; and though
she considered Miss Scott’s cure to be due to her own kindly efforts,
she had not fully realised the result until she saw the charming young
face smiling in admiration at her husband’s marvellous memory, while
Jocelyn stole another glance at Ellen to convince himself that the
amazing change was real. Lady Jane had come in almost noiselessly.

“Where are the girls?” she inquired, in a frigid tone.

The Colonel started as if he had heard a runaway motor-car close behind
him in the road, and even the impassive Jocelyn turned his face sharply
towards his mother.

“The girls are in the schoolroom,” answered Miss Scott, with smiling
calm. “I came to find Macaulay’s History for them, and the Colonel was
good enough to get it down for me.”

With this simple and truthful explanation she left the group and went
away, taking the book with her.

But from that moment Lady Jane’s peace of mind faded away like a
pleasant dream, and the familiar spectre began to haunt her again with
its green eyes and whispered suggestions. She was ashamed that her
manner showed some change towards Miss Scott herself, but she could not
help it. Only yesterday at luncheon she, too, had seen Claude looking
steadily at the governess with that expression which the girls had at
once recognised--the alert glance and expectant readiness of the
sportsman when birds are about; and now she had found two others of her
flock in close conversation with the new charmer. As if that were not
enough, she realised in a flash that this pretty creature was the
undesirable governess whom her eldest son had been treating with so much
kindness and familiarity for the sake of the learned and useful Herbert
Scott. Coming upon her all at once, it was too much for Lady Jane to
bear.

“I really think you might employ your time better,” she said in icy
tones, and thereupon she turned and went away, leaving the Colonel and
Jocelyn together.

Ellen understood very well what had happened, and she regretted her
readiness in submitting to the cure. Her life at King’s Follitt had been
very delightful, and she foresaw that her stay was now to be limited.
On the other hand, she had never intended that it should last very long,
and she had meant from the first to leave as soon as she was sure of
having made a good impression on Lady Jane. It looked as if the moment
had now come, and she talked the matter over with Lionel. It was always
easy enough to get rid of the girls for half an hour in the course of a
walk; and two or three days after the little scene in the library,
Lionel and Ellen were sitting together again, on the rock by the
moorland road, while Evelyn and Gwendolen tickled trout in the pool
below on the other side of the knoll.

“I must do one of two things,” Ellen said: “I must either redden my nose
and go lame again, or I must go away, since I have ceased to be
undesirable.”

Lionel looked at her, and then at the ground, and was silent. He meant
to marry her before long, but he was inclined to put off the moment when
he must tell his father and mother of his intention. The Follitts were
not timid people, as a family, and, in spite of his mild ways, the
Colonel had distinguished himself in active service; but they were not
more remarkable for moral courage than average people usually are, which
was one reason why everybody liked them. People with noble qualities are
sometimes very hard to live with: the daily exhibition of self-control
is both discouraging and fatiguing to ordinary people who have not much
of it, and those superior individuals who have no moral timidity rarely
hesitate to show us what poor creatures we really are. In this respect
Lionel, as well as his father and brother, was very like ordinary
people. But Lady Jane was not, and they knew it, and their genuine
affection was tempered by a wholesome dread.

“Which shall it be?” Ellen asked, after a long time.

“Which would you rather do?” asked Lionel weakly.

This time it was she who glanced at Lionel and looked down; but she was
not silent, as he had been. “I should like you to make up my mind for
me,” she said, in a rather low voice.

He knew what that meant, but it no more occurred to him that she was
pressing him to make a much more important decision than such a thought
had crossed her own mind. The words had come quite naturally, and they
were the right ones under the circumstances. Lionel knew that it was
time to act if he was not a coward, and the moral timidity of the
Follitts had never gone so far as that. They would all put off a
difficult interview or a disagreeable scene as long as possible, but
when it was positively necessary to stand up for their beliefs, or their
likes or dislikes, they did not run away.

“We must be married in June,” Lionel said, after a moment’s thought. “In
the meantime you had better go back to your father and leave me to
settle matters with my mother. It has been an amusing little comedy, and
no one need ever know the truth but you and I. To begin it over again
would not be worthy of you, and I should be a brute if I allowed it.
Besides, I am sure those girls would find you out.”

“That’s very likely,” answered Ellen.

“My mother has grown very fond of you, too, and though she is afraid
that we shall all make love to you if you stay, the good impression
will remain if you leave, and that’s something, after all.”

“She will never consent to your marrying a foundling,” Ellen said
gravely. “That will be the real difficulty.”

“Why need she know that you are not really Herbert Scott’s daughter?”

“Because I won’t marry you unless she knows the whole truth,” answered
Ellen with determination. “She will probably be very angry in any case,
but she will forgive us in time. Don’t you see how dreadful it would be
if there should be something more to tell after she has accepted the
situation?”

Lionel saw that she was right, and made up his mind to face the whole
difficulty at once. He said so.

“Then I’ll speak to Lady Jane to-morrow morning,” Ellen said. “She will
probably be only too glad to let me go at once.”

“You may be sure of that!” laughed Lionel, for she had told him what had
taken place in the library.

“Then this is going to be good-bye until you come to town again?” she
said, rather sadly.

“I suppose so,” Lionel admitted disconsolately.

They looked at each other a moment.

“Are you quite--quite sure that you want it?” she asked presently.

“Quite sure,” he answered, without hesitation.

“Because men have done such things and have been sorry afterwards. Since
I’ve been here I’ve understood that it’s not going to be nearly so easy
for you as I had thought. I’ve not spoken about it, but I must before
you take the final step. It’s all so different from what I had expected,
or even dreamed of.”

“What is different?” Lionel asked.

“The way you live. You see, you never told me anything about it. You
only said that your father was a country gentleman, decently well off,
and that you could give yourself up to study because you would have
enough to live on. You never gave me the least idea that you were very
rich people, nor that it was a great old estate and entailed, and all
that sort of thing. It makes a difference, you know.”

“I don’t see why,” Lionel objected.

“I do. It’s one thing for the son of a quiet, retired officer of no
particular position to marry a foundling and a governess. It’s quite
another, now that you turn out to be great country people, related to
half the peerage, and perfectly frightfully rich. I wish you were not.”

Lionel laughed. “If I were not,” he answered, “I should not be able to
do as I please without asking leave of any one. I should have to go to
work to earn our living, and I have not the faintest idea how I should
do that. As a matter of fact, I should not have had the right to ask you
to marry me, just for the pleasure of starving together.”

“That would be better than nothing,” answered Ellen, without much
reflection. “As it is, I am not sure that I have a right to marry
you--though I will, if you’ll have me! Every one will call me a scheming
adventuress.”

“I think not,” said Lionel, and his rather gentle and melancholy face
grew suddenly obdurate and almost remorseless. “Of course there will be
one row and a general exchange of pleasant family amenities. But there
will never be another.”

“And what will happen if I change my mind, and tell you that it has all
been a mistake, and that I think it would be very wrong of me to marry
you, because I should ruin your life?”

“I don’t know what would happen,” Lionel answered, with a confident
smile. “You had better ask a dramatist or a man who writes novels.”

He was right in that, for they were the least dramatic pair in the
world, and Lionel’s courtship had been of the simplest and most
conventional sort. Their affection for each other had begun quietly, and
had grown the more steadily and strongly for having been quite
undisturbed, until it had entirely absorbed their two existences into
one growth. The idea of separation seemed as absurd to them now as that
the law of gravity should be suddenly reversed, or that trees should
grow upside down. They did not realise that such attachments really
have in them the character of fate--the very kind which most surely ends
in tragedy when it does not lead to perfect happiness.

Even now, when action was unavoidable and the first great moment seemed
to be at hand, they parted without much show of feeling. Each felt
perfectly sure of the other, and both were certain that there would not
be many more partings.




CHAPTER VI


Ellen knocked at the door of Lady Jane’s morning room and composed her
face for the coming interview. She was quite sure that her request to be
allowed to leave at once would be granted with enthusiasm, but it was
necessary to play her little part with circumspection and dignity.

She found Lady Jane armed to the teeth: to be plain, she was dressed for
motoring, and presented a formidable appearance, besides being evidently
in a hurry. But Miss Scott was not intimidated; on the contrary, she
judged that the interview would be the sooner over.

“I’ve come to ask if you will let me off my engagement, and allow me to
go home,” she said quietly.

Lady Jane stared hard at her for a moment, before speaking.

“Why?”

That was all; but the question was not exactly easy to answer, and she
was quite unprepared for it.

“I shall be very grateful if you will let me go,” she said.

“But why? You must have a reason, and I think I have a right to know
what it is.”

Ellen felt inclined to recall to Lady Jane the tone of the
advertisement, but was afraid that she might be thought vain of her
present improved appearance.

“You have been very kind to me,” she said, after a moment’s thought; “I
shall never forget it. But the greatest kindness of all will be to let
me go home.”

Lady Jane was still standing; she made a step forward, so that she was
quite close to the governess, and she gazed steadily into her eyes.

“Some one has annoyed you,” she said suddenly, with great decision. “I
am quite sure of it. No, my dear, you need not shake your head. I know
it. The fact is, that from being perfectly”--she was going to say
hideous, but checked herself--“from being distinctly plain, you have
grown to be as pretty as a picture! And the usual result has followed!
You’ve turned all their heads!”

“Really, Lady Jane!” cried Miss Scott in a tone of deprecation, and she
could not help blushing in the most charming way possible.

“It’s quite true.” Lady Jane sat down and looked disconsolately at her
neat gaiters. “It’s all my fault for giving you my lotion and making
you dress better,” she added, evidently in extreme dejection.

Ellen bit her lip. “I can’t help being grateful to you for it,” she
said.

“The worst of it is that I’ve grown to like you,” responded Lady Jane in
evident despair. “If it was only because you’re such a good governess,
and have such wonderful influence over the girls, it wouldn’t matter
much, would it?”

Ellen smiled, in spite of herself, but could find nothing to say.

“You see,” Lady Jane continued, “I have never had a governess I liked,
till now. If you knew what I’ve been through with them! There was that
Miss Kirk, with her violet eyes--oh, that Miss Kirk! I wonder I did not
beat her! One of the most delightful moments of my life was when I told
her to go. But you! You’re the ideal! What possessed me, to give you my
lotion! I might have known it would cure you.”

She was really distressed, but Miss Scott did not know what to say.

“I saw it coming,” Lady Jane went on, presently. “I’ve seen this coming
for days and days! Why in the world must all my men be such utter
butterflies--the whole hive of them! I mean--of course, butterflies
don’t live in hives, do they?--oh, you know what I mean! But when I saw
how well you behaved--with such dignity, so unlike that Miss Kirk--well,
I thought you would give them all a lesson, and that there would be
peace. But I suppose that was impossible.”

“But it’s not that, I assure you,” objected Ellen.

“Nonsense! It’s very nice of you to say so, of course, and you may be
sure that I shall not ask you to go into details. That wouldn’t be quite
nice of me, would it? But you can’t go! You simply can’t, for I won’t
let you; and I’m sure I don’t know what is to be done if you stay.”

“I really think I must go, Lady Jane.”

“Oh, no!” cried Lady Jane, with the utmost decision. “That’s quite
ridiculous, you know, so we needn’t talk about it. The question is, what
will happen next? Do you think, perhaps, that if you stop using the
lotion, your complexion will--er----”

“Get blotchy again?” asked Ellen, completing the sentence. “It may, I
suppose; but I think the thing is quite gone. Will you look at my
cheek?”

Lady Jane bent down a little, for she was much the taller, and
carefully examined the cheek in question, poking it with one of her
heavily gloved fingers.

“No,” she said regretfully, “it’s just like a healthy baby’s. Of
course,” she added, with what seemed a happy inspiration, “you could do
your hair as you used to again, like a skinned rabbit. And I suppose you
could wear your clothes in a bunch; and it’s not necessary for your
health for you to stuff out your shoulder. By-the-bye, it’s awfully well
done!”

She put out her hands with the evident intention of touching the
stuffing; but as there was none, Ellen sprang back, dodging away from
her and laughing.

“Oh, please don’t!” she cried.

“What’s the matter?” asked Lady Jane in surprise.

“I’m so dreadfully ticklish about the neck! I really cannot bear to
have any one touch me. I should have a fit!”

“How very odd! Were you always like that? But some people are. Never
mind, I won’t touch you, my dear. Only, if you were willing just to make
those little changes in your appearance--er--it’s a great deal to ask, I
suppose, isn’t it?”

“Well--frankly, it is, Lady Jane,” Ellen laughed, in spite of herself.

But she was immensely disturbed by the unexpected difficulty that faced
her, and she had a vision of being obliged to run away as the only means
of escaping.

“I don’t see what else we can do,” returned Lady Jane. “As for parting
with you, it’s out of the question. My girls are different beings since
you have had them in hand. If you knew what my life has been, since they
were out of the nursery, compared with what it is now, you really
wouldn’t have the heart to talk of leaving me, nor the conscience
either!”

“I’m very, very glad that you are pleased,” Ellen answered, with an air
of meek gratitude, “but I assure you I must----”

“No doubt, but you shan’t, my dear, and there’s an end of it!” Lady Jane
was ready to lose her temper, but laughed to hide the fact. “It’s out of
the question at this moment,” she continued. “We are all going off
to-day, and you must see yourself that the girls cannot be left alone in
the house with Lionel! They would set the place on fire, or go to town
by themselves and get lost, or do some dreadful thing. Don’t you see?”

“I did not know you were all going away,” said Ellen, somewhat
disturbed.

“Yes. We only made up our minds last night, or I would have told you.
Jocelyn is going up with the Trevelyans in their balloon to-morrow
morning, and my husband and I want to see the start; and Claude is to
play for Yorkshire at Lords to-morrow, and when we’ve seen the ascent,
the Colonel wants to watch the match, and I mean to chase the balloon in
the new motor. I’ve got an electric searchlight, with accumulators,
fitted up so that I can see it all night. Rather sporting, that, isn’t
it? We may fetch up at John O’Groat’s House, or at Land’s End, you
know--so delightfully uncertain--you cannot tell which way the thing
will go. But just fancy my anxiety if I knew all the time that those
little pickles were riding steeplechases in the park, or motoring across
country and breaking their necks. It’s too awful to think of!”

“Quite too dreadful,” assented Ellen. “But you won’t be away long, I
suppose? I will stay till you come home, at all events, if you wish it.”

“Wish it? I should think I did! Besides, you must, my dear. So that’s
settled, and we’ll be off, for it’s getting late.”

A quarter of an hour later the huge motor was bowling down the Malton
road, and King’s Follitt was left to Lionel, Miss Scott, and the two
girls, very much to the surprise of all four. For on the previous
evening Lionel had gone off to his books soon after dinner, and had
finished breakfast with his sisters and the governess before any of the
others appeared. Indeed, it was not till luncheon that he knew of their
abrupt departure.

At the first opportunity, Ellen told him about the interview in the
morning, and added that she meant to disappear as soon as the family
returned. That would be the only way open to her.

Lionel was as much surprised as she had been by Lady Jane’s attitude,
but it seemed promising for the future. At all events, when the time
came for him to declare his intention of marrying Miss Scott, he could
remind his mother that she had liked Ellen for her own sake; and as she
was a truthful and just woman, she would not deny it. That would be
something, at all events: matters would have been far worse if she had
hated the governess, as she had hated the former ones, each and all.

“We must be married in June,” Lionel said again, for having once made up
his mind he was not likely to change it. “We will spend the summer
abroad, and go to India next winter. By that time they will have got
used to the idea, and a year hence we can come home.”

“That sounds delightful,” Ellen answered. “I wish we could take my
father, for no one knows India as he does. But then, we couldn’t be
alone all the time, if he came.”

“I should like to take him,” said Lionel. “Perhaps we could bargain for
so many hours a day!”

But they did not take Mr. Herbert Scott of the British Museum to India,
or anywhere else; for things turned out very differently. The Fate of
the Follitts had been dozing comfortably for some time, but now she
suddenly woke up refreshed with sleep, and got into the balloon with
Jocelyn and the Trevelyans, and did queer things, which nobody else
could have done.




CHAPTER VII


The wind was fresh from the south-west, with rain, and the night was
dark. The balloon was driving along at a dangerous rate, considering the
low altitude.

“I give it up,” said Bob Trevelyan, who had not spoken for a long time.
“We’ve been travelling five hours, and I haven’t the vaguest idea where
we are.”

“Does it matter much?” inquired Jocelyn lazily.

For he was comfortable where he was, and hoped that it would go on a
long time, since he was pleasantly close to Anne Trevelyan in the bottom
of the car. No one who has not been up in a gale can have any idea of
the profound quiet which seems to enfold the balloon as it is borne
noiselessly along in the arms of the wind, perhaps at thirty or forty
miles an hour. If it rains, you hear the drops pattering on the envelope
overhead; if you are near the ground at night, the howling of the wind
through the unseen trees comes up to you in a rather dismal way; but no
matter how hard it blows, there is peace and tranquillity in the car.

Anne Trevelyan and her friend Lady Dorothy Wynne were poring over a map,
by the light of an electric lamp which Jocelyn held for them.

“It might matter a little,” Anne said, looking up with a laugh as she
spoke; “for the only thing that is quite certain is that we are bound to
get to the sea pretty soon. I think I’ll have a look.”

She got up, and all three scrambled to their feet and peered over the
edge of the car.

“It really is rather a dirty night,” observed Lady Dorothy, with great
calm.

“Distinctly,” said Anne, admitting what could not be denied.

Jocelyn said nothing, for he knew that a woman who is inaccessible to
physical fear is much more reckless than any brave and sensible man has
a right to be, and he was beginning to wonder what the end would be
like, and how many arms and legs, or even necks, would be broken before
morning. For it was his first ascent, and though he was not scared he
realised that there was danger.

There had been a good deal of delay at the start, and the breeze had
been light from the south during most of the afternoon, though the sky
had been threatening. The wind had strengthened, however, as it hauled
to the south-west, and at dusk it had freshened to a gale. Then the
darkness had come on quickly, almost suddenly, as it does even on land,
when the sky blackens with heavy clouds just at sunset. It was now quite
impossible to distinguish anything on the face of the earth below, but
all around the horizon there was a faint belt of grey, which was not
light, but was not quite pitch darkness. The ominous moaning of the wind
amongst the trees began to make itself heard.

“It’s not wildly gay here,” said Lady Dorothy. “Can’t you manage to get
above the clouds?”

Bob pointed to the inky sky overhead. “Those clouds are half a mile
thick,” he said quietly. “There you are! We’re in another!”

“How are we off for ballast?” inquired Anne, as the chilly fog filled
the car.

“Six bags gone already, and only two left,” Bob answered with grim calm.

“Not really?” cried Dorothy in some dismay.

“Yes. How can you expect any balloon to keep up in this rain? She’s
being battered down by it. We are getting lower every minute.”

At that moment the balloon shivered like a live thing, and flapped her
loose sides. Bob shovelled some sand overboard.

“We’ll keep the last bag,” he said; “but to-morrow’s breakfast must go.
Pass me the bottle of milk--that’s heavy.”

Jocelyn got a big stoneware bottle from the basket by the light of the
electric lamp, and gave it to Trevelyan.

“Don’t murder anybody below,” he said.

Bob dropped the thing overboard, and almost immediately a dull thud was
heard out of the darkness as it struck the earth. But there was no
sound of breaking; they were over a meadow or a ploughed field.

“Give me that pie,” said Bob. “Wasn’t there a magnum of champagne
somewhere? It’s got to go too.”

“Hullo! What’s that?” cried Anne joyfully. “I believe it’s the moon, and
we’re out of the clouds!”

“By Jove!” ejaculated Jocelyn, who was not easily surprised, and was not
at all enthusiastic about the beauties of nature.

The inky cloud had not been so deep as Bob had supposed, and the
balloon, responding the instant her ballast was lightened, had struck
upwards to the clear outer air; the moon had risen, and was still almost
full, and in the far sky, beyond her radiance, the stars twinkled softly
as on a summer night.

The four young people almost held their

[Illustration:

     “The huge black shadow of the balloon ran swiftly over it.”
]

breath while they were silently borne along in a vision of transcendent
beauty. Beneath them, the dark clouds had been whirling in the gale that
tore and churned and wrung them with its unseen airy hands; above, there
was the peace of heaven itself and the loveliness of earth’s first
moonlight on the evening after the first day. The moving mass of cloud
below looked suddenly motionless, vast and solid as grey rock, and the
huge black shadow of the balloon and the car ran swiftly over it, clear
and sharply outlined.

It only lasted a few minutes, for the heavy rain had soaked everything
and a descent was inevitable. Soon the wet fog rose and closed overhead
again, the moon took strange opalescent colours, and was dimmed and then
disappeared, as the balloon sank steadily into the storm.

“If we had only had a fine night, we could have got to Scotland,” said
Dorothy Wynne, in a tone of profound regret.

“Don’t you be too sure!” answered Bob. “With this wind it looks more
like the North Sea!”

“Then if our ballast had held out we could have got across to Norway,”
retorted the young lady, who was not to be daunted by trifles.

But at this moment the car jerked violently, throwing all its four
occupants against one side of itself. It turned and rolled and jumped
like a skiff in a breaking sea.

“Hang on, girls!” cried Bob Trevelyan. “We’re on our trial rope
already!”

The two young women were already hanging on by the rigging for dear
life; and Jocelyn was making it especially easy for Anne to hang on.
Indeed, she had a sensation which was very like being carried along in
his arms--which surprised her, for she knew she was not particularly
light in spite of her slim waist. A slender ash sapling can be as heavy
as a common pine nearly twice its size.

Presently the jerking was varied by a violent wrench, which laid the car
on its side, and almost upset it.

“Bad for that tree-top,” observed Bob, as the balloon sailed away again.
“What next, I wonder? Does any one see anything? One ought to, with that
moon up there; but it’s as dark as Erebus.”

“It’s the blackest moonlight night I’ve ever known,” laughed Anne.

Possibly she found it more amusing than the other did, and she certainly
felt more safe than Lady Dorothy possibly could. Jocelyn was a
surprisingly strong young man, and may have exaggerated her danger a
little.

“I believe we are over a desert island,” said her friend cheerfully.
“I’ve not seen any lights for an age.”

The conversation was interrupted by a tremendous wrench, and the car was
wrestling with another tree-top.

“That was a rather thrilling moment!” laughed Anne Trevelyan.

“I tell you what,” said Bob, not laughing at all, “at the first open
space we come to, down we go! We’re sinking every minute, and I don’t
want to stop her with my nose against the next oak we strike.”

He spoke quietly, but the others understood their danger, and all four
peered down over the edge of the car in breathless silence, while the
balloon moved on in a series of irregular bounds, as the trail-rope
encountered more or less resistance. A faint grey line now became
visible ahead, where the belt of trees ended.

“If we clear the trees, I’ll pop the valve,” said Bob quietly. “There
must be open ground beyond. Be ready with the anchor, Anne; Jocelyn will
help you. It’s a night for the ripping line, and I’ll manage that
myself.”

All four clung to the rigging in silence for some moments. Then the
report of the suddenly opened valve rang through the air like a muffled
gunshot. Two seconds passed, not more, and Bob ripped.

“Look out for the bump, girls!”

The fast sinking car descended, slanting on the wind, till it struck the
ground with considerable force and was instantly overturned. The four
clung on with all their might, almost where they were, while Trevelyan
ripped again; the balloon swayed wildly, darted forward a couple of
yards, wrenching the car along after it, and then collapsed like a dying
game-cock.

Bob crawled out of the wreck first, and then helped the others, and in
the gloom the two young girls silently straightened their hats; for that
is the first impulse of feminine humanity after an accident. If a woman
could be raised from the dead by radium, which begins to look possible,
she would straighten her hat before doing anything else.

“This is all very well, but where are we?” asked Lady Dorothy, as soon
as that was done.

“In a meadow,” answered Jocelyn. “Lucky it’s not a ploughed field.”

“What a night!” groaned the young girl.

For they had been dry and comfortable under the vast shelter of the
inflated balloon, but they were now almost instantly soaked through and
through by the lashing rain, and the two girls staggered as they stood
up and faced the raging gale. Again Jocelyn’s arm was very useful to
Miss Anne.

“We must make for shelter at once,” her brother said. “After all, we are
in England, and we can’t be very far from civilisation. No one will
steal the balloon on a night like this.”

“The old thing looks comfortable enough,” observed Jocelyn. “Rather
done, though!”

He and Anne followed her brother and Dorothy, who led the way, linking
arms and bending their heads to the storm, while they waded through what
felt like a field of wet bathing sponges. Against the dim grey light
they could see the trees over which they had lately passed, writhing and
twisting in the gale.

“If this is a meadow, it’s a pretty big one,” said Anne.

At that moment Bob uttered an exclamation: he and his companion had
struck a narrow path covered with fine white gravel that gleamed in the
uncertain light.

“We’re in a park!” cried Trevelyan. “What luck! That means a good-sized
house, at all events.”

“And a possible dinner,” added Lady Dorothy cheerfully.

But Jocelyn and Anne said nothing, because they were so busy in helping
each other to walk. All four tramped steadily along the path for a
couple of hundred yards or more, till they brought up short before an
insurmountable obstacle that suddenly loomed up out of the dark; it was
nothing less than a stone wall, at least fifteen feet high, which
evidently enclosed the grounds, and seemed to be topped by a row of
murderous-looking split spikes. The path turned aside some twenty feet
from it, and seemed to wander away aimlessly towards the trees.

“This is an odd sort of place we’ve dropped into!” said Lady Dorothy;
and all four stood in a row and stared at the forbidding wall.

“They evidently don’t encourage trespassers,” observed Trevelyan.

“Only an idiot would waste all that money,” said Jocelyn, who was still
hard up, and momentarily looked at everything from the financial point
of view.

“I rather wish we were on the other side of it,” Anne said.

“You’ll be left waiting, dear,” answered Lady Dorothy, who adored
American slang.

“Follow the path,” Jocelyn advised. “It must lead to the house in the
end.”

There was clearly nothing else to be done, and for some minutes no sound
was heard but the regular tread of four pairs of strong shoes crunching
the fine gravel, and the swish of the driving rain, and the howling of
the wind in the trees not far off. They could still see the wall
stretching away into the gloom.

Suddenly, there were lights in the distance, and a big house loomed
against the stormy sky; an ugly, square, uninviting house, as they saw
in a few minutes, for the sight had revived their spirits, and they
walked faster. Before long they struck the drive, towards which the path
led, and across the gravelled space to the front door. Trevelyan rang,
and the others huddled round him on the steps, to get shelter from the
rain.

A footman in a quiet brown livery opened in a few moments, and they did
not notice that he seemed exceedingly surprised when he saw them;
indeed, his astonishment was altogether out of proportion to the
circumstances, for his jaw dropped, and he gasped audibly. All the four
were dazzled by the blaze of light from the vestibule, after having been
so long out of doors in the dark, and did not notice the man’s manner.
Trevelyan at once explained what brought them; and as soon as the
footman understood, he let them in, shut and locked the door, put the
key in his pocket, and went off, muttering something about the master of
the house.

A few moments later the latter appeared in person, in evening dress,
and carrying his napkin in his hand, having evidently left his dinner in
the utmost haste. Though tired and half stupefied by the storm, the four
aëronauts were strongly impressed by his personality. He was by no means
an ill-looking man, yet there was something extraordinary and almost
terrifying in his appearance. He was tall, lean, strongly made, and of a
dark complexion, with smooth iron-grey hair; his jaw was broad and
square, his lips thin and determined. One sees many such men in England,
but not with eyes like his. They were round, but deep-set, and they were
at once luminous and hard, like those of the nobler birds of prey. I
know a tamer of wild beasts who has just such eyes as those; one would
almost say that he could not shut the lids if he tried, even for sleep,
and it is easy to

[Illustration:

     “‘We are awfully sorry to intrude on your privacy in this way,’ he
     said.”
]

understand why the big tigers slink down and crouch under them, watching
him cautiously, as if his look would kill.

Trevelyan spoke first. “We are awfully sorry to intrude on your privacy
in this way,” he said, remembering the spiked wall of the park, and
reflecting that it looked as forbidding as its owner. “We are
balloonists, and were caught in the storm, and had to come down where we
could, for fear of being blown out to sea--and it happened to be in your
grounds. Is the sea far off?”

“A quarter of a mile,” answered the master of the house, in a deep,
quiet voice, much as a tamer speaks to his lions.

Anne and Dorothy exchanged glances.

“Then, considering what a narrow escape we’ve had,” Trevelyan continued,
“I hope you won’t mind our having trespassed.”

At the last word a smile dawned on the grim face of the master of the
house. “I fancy you are the first people who have ever succeeded in
trespassing here,” he said.

“I should think so!” cried Lady Dorothy. “We saw your wall.”

They were beginning to think it strange that they were not asked to come
in, and Trevelyan was a trifle impatient. “Should you mind very much if
we came in and dried ourselves a bit?” he asked. “The ladies are
soaking.”

“And I am very sorry to bother you,” added Dorothy, “but really we are
starving. We had to throw all our eatables overboard as ballast, you
see.”

The master of the house did not answer at once, and seemed absorbed in
his reflections. He thoughtfully stroked his long upper lip. “By all
means,” he said at last, very slowly. “Of course! Come in, and make
yourselves as comfortable as you can.”

The vestibule in which this conversation had taken place opened upon a
hall of moderate size and plainly furnished, where a coal fire was
burning brightly. The host drew aside to let them pass in, and they
began to warm themselves. He looked up, apparently in some inexplicable
perplexity.

“Where have you come from?” he asked.

“From London,” Trevelyan answered. “Is there any way of going back
to-night? By-the-bye, where are we?”

“You’re in Yorkshire, and the nearest station is Hamley, six miles from
here.”

“By Jove!” ejaculated Jocelyn, on learning that he was not forty miles
from King’s Follitt. “What’s the last train to York?”

“Eight thirty-seven,” answered the host, and he looked at his watch.
“It’s almost that now. No train before to-morrow morning, I’m sorry to
say. You’re nearly five miles from any other house, too.”

Then Lady Dorothy Wynne, who had a sweet low voice, turned it to its
most persuasive tone. “I’m very, very sorry,” she said, “but I’m afraid
we shall have to trespass on your kindness still further, and ask
shelter for the night.”

Again the master of the house stroked his upper lip with a thoughtful
expression before answering. His reluctance to offer any hospitality to
the dripping party was quite apparent, and he looked at the waiting
footman, who looked at him.

From far away the sound of voices, talking and laughing, reached the
hall in the silence that followed Dorothy’s speech. Clearly there was a
large party at dinner.

“By all means! Of course!” The host used the very words he had used
before. “I can certainly put you up, though I’ve rather a large party in
the house. Never mind; there is always room for more. John, call Mrs.
Williams.”

During the footman’s absence Trevelyan thought it was at last time to
introduce the party. “My name is Trevelyan,” he said. “This is Lady
Dorothy Wynne, and this is my sister.”

“My name is Follitt,” said Jocelyn, speaking for himself.

The man’s peculiar eyes turned from one face to the other as he heard
the names, and nodded slightly. A tamer might inspect a new set of wild
beasts with much the same look while making up his mind how to treat
each. “My name is Steele,” he answered. “I hope you will soon be none
the worse for your wetting.”

The arrival of Mrs. Williams at this juncture rendered an answer
unnecessary. She looked half a governess and half a housekeeper; she was
a quiet, superior sort of person, with a stiff starched collar and
gold-rimmed eye-glasses, and she wore a black silk dress, with a large
bunch of keys at her side.

Mr. Steele spoke to her very slowly and distinctly. “These ladies and
gentlemen,” he said, “have descended in the grounds with their balloon.
There is no train to-night, as you know, and there is no other place to
which they can go, so they must tarry here till to-morrow morning. There
are still some empty bedrooms, I think?”

“Three, sir. There are Five, Six, and Seven in the new wing unoccupied.”

Mr. Steele nodded, and looked at Mrs. Williams, and then at the footman.
Trevelyan was sure that they exchanged a glance of intelligence.

“You may find my house-party rather mixed,” said the host, almost with
geniality, now that he had at last made up his mind. “The fact is, I
have a sort of gathering of relations and distant connections. I like to
see many people about me, of all ages. You won’t mind dining with us? We
had just sat down when you came, so that there is plenty of time. I
daresay you will be glad to go to bed directly afterwards. You must be
very tired, I’m sure.”

He said a few words to Mrs. Williams in an undertone, leading the way
with her to the stairs, and she answered by a quick succession of nods.
The others followed, and went up after her, while Mr. Steele went back
to his guests.

The bedrooms to which the housekeeper showed the party lacked
individuality, and though they were thoroughly comfortable, there was
not the least attempt at luxury, or even good taste. The furniture was
new, but very plain, and the chintz was fresh, but utterly
uninteresting, if not quite hideous. A few cheap prints hung on the
walls.

“I’m sure there’s no lady of the house,” said Anne to Dorothy, and she
proceeded to extract information from the housekeeper.

Mr. Steele was not married. He had no near relations--at least, not in
the house; but he liked to be surrounded by many people, and the place
was generally full. Mrs. Williams would say no more, or possibly there
was nothing more to be said; but she did her best to make the newcomers
comfortable, and produced dry skirts and shoes for the ladies.

A few minutes later they were all ushered into the dining-room, where at
least five-and-twenty men were seated at a big table. All turned their
heads and looked curiously at the newly-arrived guests.

Mr. Steele rose to meet the latter as they entered. There were four
vacant places on his left.

“Will you and Miss Trevelyan sit together by me,” he said, speaking to
Lady Dorothy, “and the two gentlemen beyond?”

The arrangement seemed a singular one; but the four took their seats,
and as Jocelyn slipped in next to Anne, her brother was the only one who
found himself beside a stranger.

He glanced at his neighbour, who was a mild-eyed, benevolent old
gentleman, whose smooth grey hair was neatly parted and brushed over his
ears. He wore a single stud with a large carbuncle set in it, and he had
black silk mittens on his bony little hands. He returned Trevelyan’s
glance pleasantly, and then went on eating his fish with a faint smile.

Mr. Steele began to talk with Lady Dorothy, and though his voice was not
loud, it seemed to dominate the conversation as far as she was
concerned, so that she heard no one else.

“May I ask if Mr. and Miss Trevelyan are connected with the Dorsetshire
family of that name?” he inquired, after a few preliminary phrases.

“They are the Dorsetshire Trevelyans themselves,” answered Lady Dorothy.
“He is the eldest son.”

“Oh, indeed--indeed,” repeated Mr. Steele, thoughtfully. “Thank you,” he
added quietly; “it was mere curiosity. Do you go in for any sport
besides ballooning? Golf, for instance? We have excellent links here,
and we play a good deal.” He spoke louder, and looked down the table.
“Mr. Weede over there is one of our crack players.”

At this remark a pale young clergyman in spectacles, who sat at the
other end of the table, looked up with a deprecatory smile.

“You will make me vain of my poor accomplishment, if you say such
things,” he said humbly. “Remember the Preacher, Mr. Steele: ‘Vanity of
vanities, all is not vanity that glitters!’”

Lady Dorothy laughed kindly in an encouraging way, because he seemed so
humble. But every one at once began to talk of golf, almost excitedly.

“My friends are almost all very fond of out-of-door games,” said Mr.
Steele to Lady Dorothy, as if in explanation.

“Do you mind telling me who that good-looking man is?” she asked. “The
third from the other end on the left? The one with the grey moustache
and a tired face, who looks like an old soldier.”

“Trevelyan is his name, and he is an old army man. But do tell me
something about your trip,” Mr. Steele went on quickly: “you must have
had a terrible time of it in such a storm.”

“It wasn’t very successful,” the young girl answered carelessly; “but we
get used to all sorts of weather in balloons, you know. The last time I
was up, we came down rather suddenly in a cricket field where there was
a match going on. I remember that I got some most extraordinary bruises!
I can’t help looking at that man--Mr. Trevelyan, you say he is. I see
why you asked about my friend here--they may be connections. Where does
this one belong?”

“He’s a Lincolnshire man,” answered the host briefly, and as if he did
not care about him.

“Oh, the ‘mad’ Trevelyans, we call them! Then he is really a connection
of my friend. Their grandfathers were cousins, I believe. What is this
one’s first name?”

“Randolph, I believe. I’ve never made an ascent in a balloon. I should
really like to know whether it’s a new sensation worth trying. Do you
mind telling me how it struck you, the first time you rose above a
cloud?”

“Cosy,” Lady Dorothy answered without hesitation--“distinctly cosy!
There’s never any tiresome wind in a balloon, you know, as there is on a
yacht, to blow you about. It goes along with you, and it’s so amusing to
travel very fast and yet not feel that you are moving at all. And
there’s always some excitement when you come down, for it’s never twice
alike, and of course bones are only bones after all, and you always may
break one or two. I suppose that’s where the sport comes in.”

At this moment a distant peal of thunder was heard above the general
conversation. Lady Dorothy looked at her host, as if expecting him to
say something in answer to her explanations; but his expression had
changed, and he seemed suddenly preoccupied.

“I’m glad we’re not in the balloon now,” she said. “The gale is going
to end in a regular thunderstorm!”

Mr. Steele was speaking to the butler in a low voice. “Have those
curtains drawn closer,” Lady Dorothy heard him say, “and be quick as you
can with the rest of the dinner!”

It was clear that either he, or some of his guests, were nervous about
thunder and lightning. A second peal, much nearer than the first, made
the windows rattle. The conversation, which had already dropped to a
lower key, now ceased altogether, and a sort of embarrassed silence
followed, while most of the diners glanced nervously round the room and
towards the tall windows. Mr. Steele looked as if he were bracing
himself to meet an unexpected danger; his brows were knitted, his stern
mouth was tightly shut, and he was evidently scanning the faces of his
guests with anxiety.

“Do you often have bad thunderstorms here?” Lady Dorothy asked, to
attract his attention and break the silence.

“Seldom,” he answered abstractedly, and not looking at her. “Most of my
guests dislike them very much.”

“How very odd!”

She glanced down the table, and saw the nice-looking Mr. Trevelyan
leaning far back in his chair, his eyes half closed and his face very
white.

Mr. Steele made an attempt to revive the conversation, talking in loud
tones to the whole table about a lawn tennis tournament, for which he
said there would be a number of pretty prizes.

Bob Trevelyan was eating steadily, and took no interest in what was
going on. Suddenly he felt that the benevolent old gentleman was
plucking at his sleeve very quietly. He turned, and saw that his
neighbour was earnestly gazing at him. At that moment a third peal rang
out, and the glasses on the table trembled.

“Did he tell you who I am?” asked the old gentleman in an undertone, and
bending his head towards the master of the house.

“I beg your pardon: no--I don’t think I was introduced,” Bob answered.

“He would have told you that I am Mr. Simpson; and so I was,” said the
grey-haired man. “But that,” he added in low and tragic tones, “was by
another mother. I am the Dowager Empress of China, and I am here
incognito, disguised as a man.”

“What in the world do you mean?” asked Trevelyan, very much taken
aback.

“It is a sad story, and a long one.” The old gentleman shook his head
mysteriously. “They thought I took too active a part in politics.
Possibly I did, but at the time of the Boxer riots many outrageous
doings were unjustly traced to me. I give you my solemn assurance, on
the word of an empress, that I did not order the attack on the
Legations! Do you believe me, or not?”

He gazed at Bob with fixed eyes, but Trevelyan could only stare back in
blank surprise.

“They brought me here in tea chests,” he continued earnestly, “disguised
as a Chinese idol. It was a terrible humiliation. The Empress-mother in
Pekin, who gives audiences, is a painted doll with a gramophone inside
her, which quite accounts for her remarkably accurate memory.”

Mr. Steele overheard this singular statement. “Really, Mr. Simpson,” he
said in stern tones, “I must beg you not to poke fun at Mr. Trevelyan.”

“Trevelyan!” cried the nice-looking man at the other end, bending
forward in his chair to see Bob’s face. “Did you say Trevelyan?”

“Yes,” Bob answered, also leaning forward--“that’s my name. Why?”

“It’s mine too,” answered the other excitedly. “Are you Dorset or
Lincolnshire?”

“Dorsetshire,” Bob answered promptly.

Every one was listening now, and Mr. Steele seemed very anxious, to
judge by his face.

“If you were a Lincolnshire Trevelyan I’d break your neck directly after
dinner,” observed the nice-looking man, and he suddenly grew calm
again, and seemed to take no further interest in Bob.

The latter began to understand; and when the Empress of China suddenly
dissolved in tears and repeated that hers was a very, very sad story, he
had no doubts left as to where he and his friends were.

At this point the Rev. Mr. Weede pointed a thin finger at Lady Dorothy,
and addressed the company in pulpit tones. “Providence,” he said, “in
its inscrutable wisdom, has been pleased to afflict our dear sister with
the delusion that she entered these consecrated precincts in a balloon.
The prayers of the congregation are requested for--”

“Mr. Weede,” cried Mr. Steele in ringing tones, “I must insist that you
do not indulge in jests unworthy of a gentleman and not befitting your
cloth!”

The young golfing clergyman smiled blandly, quite unabashed, and
answered in a single syllable, sharp and clear--“Fore!”

At this wholly unexpected and irrelevant retort, Anne Trevelyan broke
into a laugh.

“One to the parson!” observed Jocelyn in an undertone.

Things might have ended then, but at this moment an old gentleman with a
very beautiful white beard and smooth snowy hair began to sing to
himself a music-hall song of forty years ago in a thin and quavering
tenor voice:

    “Up in a balloon, boys, up in a balloon,
     All among the little stars, sailing round the moon!”

“Silence!” roared Mr. Steele from the head of the table.

The old gentleman broke down under the rebuke, and began to weep
piteously.

“I know my voice isn’t what it was,” he whined, between his sobs--“when
I used to sing the late Mr. Gladstone to sleep, after his great
speeches--‘Lullaby baby, on the tree-top.’”

He began to sing again, through his tears.

Mr. Steele struck the table with his fist.

“Stop that immediately!” he shouted. “Lady Dorothy--Miss Trevelyan,” he
continued, in the silence that followed, “I don’t know what you must
think! The thunderstorm is to blame----”

At that moment the howling squall broke open the window at the other end
of the room, and a clap of thunder followed instantly. The shaded
candles on the table were almost all out, and only a few electric lights
illuminated the scene of indescribable panic and confusion that followed
a second later.

[Illustration: “A scene of indescribable panic followed.”]

“Fire! Fire! Save the child!” yelled old Randolph Trevelyan above the
noise.

Chairs were overturned, shrieks of laughter and wailing sobs filled the
air, men rushed wildly hither and thither, falling over each other and
rolling on the floor; the dismal, long-drawn howl of a famished wolf
pierced the babel of sounds, and a heavy man, running round the room on
all fours, stumbled against Lady Dorothy’s feet, and lay there in a
heap, suddenly silent. But still above all the rest rang Randolph
Trevelyan’s despairing yells: “Save the child! Save the child! I’ll give
you ten thousand pounds if you can save the child!”

Bob Trevelyan had Lady Dorothy fast by the wrist. Jocelyn held Anne
Trevelyan by the waist close against him, and she did not feel at all
frightened; but it is true that she was naturally courageous.

“I believe we’re in a mad-house!” cried Lady Dorothy; but only Bob heard
her through the noise, and she laughed rather nervously.

“Come along!” Trevelyan called out to Jocelyn.

They made for the nearest door at once. Mr. Steele had picked up the
young man who thought he was a wolf, and was holding him firmly. The
numerous servants, who were trained men, were already leading the most
noisy of the party towards another door. Old Trevelyan’s wild yells rent
the air as he was carried off: “The child! The child!”

None of the four aëronauts ever forgot the cry, repeated in
heart-rending tones, almost without a break. They heard it after they
had left the dining-room, but when they had got to the foot of the
staircase it ceased suddenly.

They reached their rooms, high up in the new wing. Each of the young
girls had one to herself, and the two men were to sleep in the third.
But in their haste they all four rushed into the last; Bob turned up the
electric light and Jocelyn locked the door.

“A lunatic asylum!” laughed Anne. “Of all places to come down in! You
told me it was,” she added, speaking to Jocelyn, “but it seemed so
absurd that I couldn’t believe it.”

“And our cousin Randolph is the showpiece, poor chap,” said Bob.

Lady Dorothy and Jocelyn looked at him, expecting more.

“What happened to his child?” asked Dorothy.

“I was going to ask the same question,” said Jocelyn.

“It was burnt to death. It’s rather an awful story, and I don’t wonder
he went mad. I believe he had only been married two or three years when
it happened. He was in the Carabineers, I believe; at all events they
went to India as soon as they were married, and it was while they were
there that his father died and he came into the estate. But he did not
mean to leave the service, and he sent his wife to England with the
little baby, six months before the regiment was ordered home. Half an
hour before he got to his place, when he came home himself, the house
took fire, and his wife and child were burnt to death. He went mad then
and there, and there was nothing to be done but to lock him up.”

“How awful!” exclaimed Dorothy. “I shall never forget his voice.”

The four were silent, and as nothing happened Jocelyn unlocked the door
and opened it a little. In the distance sounds of footsteps could still
be heard in the passages, and the opening and shutting of a door now and
then, and voices from different directions, but that was all. The
patients who occupied the nearest rooms were either already locked in,
or were of a quieter sort and had been allowed to stay downstairs.

Jocelyn was just going to shut the door again, when Mrs. Williams
appeared. He admitted her, and she looked round quietly before speaking.

“Of course, you must have understood where you are,” she said gravely.
“This is a private asylum--Dr. Steele’s Sanatorium. The patients who are
considered harmless play games and dine together, and the Doctor takes
none who are already violent or have shown homicidal or suicidal
tendencies. It is a very exclusive establishment, especially for
gentlemen of position and means. I may say that I was housekeeper at the
late Duke of Barchester’s before I came here. The Doctor wishes me to
say how sorry he is that there was trouble just this evening. Lunatics
don’t mind anything so much as a thunderstorm, and thunder and lightning
just drive them out of their poor senses, such as they are, which isn’t
much to boast of. There’s that poor Mr. Weede, for instance, such a
quiet gentleman, and a Christian soul if ever there was one. They never
knew he was at all queer till one day, while he was preaching, he just
stopped a minute and called out ‘Fore!’ as the gentlemen do when they
play; and then he went on preaching about golf being the only salvation
for sinners’ souls, till the congregation all ran out and the sexton
and policeman got him into a cab, still preaching.”

“Something like a sermon, that,” observed Jocelyn stolidly.

“Yes, sir,” answered Mrs. Williams gravely; “they say he was at it for
more than half an hour, and hadn’t half finished when they took him
away. But I came to say,” she went on, speaking to Bob Trevelyan, “that
the Doctor would like to speak to you alone, sir, if you don’t mind. He
will come to your room, or see you in his study, as you prefer, but he
is very anxious to see you.”

“It must be about cousin Randolph,” Bob said, glancing at his sister.
“I’ll go to the Doctor’s study, Mrs. Williams, if you’ll show me the
way.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll be back directly,” she added, “to see that the
ladies have everything quite comfortable for the night.”

Trevelyan followed the housekeeper through many passages and down a good
many stairs, till she brought him to the door of Dr. Steele’s study and
knocked, and then opened the door for him to go in.

The Doctor was standing before the fire; when he saw Bob he came forward
and moved a comfortable chair into position while he spoke.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said, “but I am so placed that I think it
is my duty to ask your advice in a very important matter.”

Trevelyan smiled pleasantly, and sat down.

“If it’s my advice you want, I warn you that I’m not thought clever,” he
said. “Unless it’s about balloons.”

Dr. Steele’s face was very grave, and he paid no attention to what Bob
said.

“I understood at dinner that you were a distant cousin of Sir Randolph
Trevelyan’s,” he said. “I am sorry to say that he is just dead.”

“Dead! How awfully sudden!”

The poor man’s despairing cry still rang in Bob’s ears.

“He had an aneurism of the heart,” Dr. Steele explained, “and this last
attack killed him. He fell dead as he reached the door of his room. I
have two good physicians in residence here, and they came at once. He
was quite dead.”

“I’m exceedingly sorry to hear it,” Bob said gravely; “but I don’t quite
see how I can be of use. I’m not his heir. There are several of the
Lincolnshire people alive.”

“Precisely. But do you know his story?”

“Of course. His wife and child were burnt to death, and he went mad.”

“That is not the point,” answered Dr. Steele. “They found the mother’s
body, or what was left of it, but they found no trace of the child.”

“Poor little thing! It was probably burnt to ashes. There was nothing to
find!”

“I’m not sure. There is a possibility that it may have been kidnapped,
for you may remember that the house was found to have been set on fire
by thieves, who got away with a large quantity of valuables in the
confusion, and afterwards wrote to the family, offering to produce the
child for a ransom of five thousand pounds. Sir Randolph had been in
India and had not seen the baby for many months, and he was already in
an asylum, and much worse than when you saw him this evening, before
the thunderstorm. Babies a year old are very much alike, he could not
have recognised his daughter, a large estate was involved, and a
lunatic’s evidence is worth nothing, of course. The relations declared
that none of them had ever seen the infant, and as a recognition was out
of the question, their counsel advised them to pay no attention to the
blackmailers. Thieves would be quite capable of producing a child as the
heir, and of keeping some hold on it, in order to extract more blackmail
when it grew up. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly. I’m inclined to think that the heirs did right, though it
was to their own future advantage.”

“No doubt. But within the last few weeks the situation has changed. I am
morally persuaded that Sir Randolph’s daughter is alive and well, and
that at the present moment, since her father is dead, she is the sole
heir to the great Lincolnshire estate.”

“By Jove!” cried Bob. “That’s interesting. Of course I’ll help her to
get her own in any way I can! Where is she? And how are you sure she’s
the right baby?”

“It’s just a common criminal story. The baby had a nurse, of course, and
she was no better than she should be. The leader of the gang that burnt
and robbed the house had begun operations by establishing himself in the
village as a travelling photographer with a van. He had a proper license
for the van, and took very good photographs, and he got permission from
Lady Trevelyan to make a series of views of the park and the house. By
way of strengthening his position he made love to the nurse, and she
became his accomplice, and shared the profits afterwards. But she was
soft-hearted about children, and insisted that the baby should not run
any risk. She handed it over to the photographer-burglar just before the
house was set on fire. That’s the story.”

“How do you know it’s true?”

“Simple enough. Being a born criminal, she afterwards committed other
crimes, and was at last caught and sent to penal servitude. And now she
is dying of cancer, and has ‘experienced religion,’ as those people call
it, and has confessed the whole story to the chaplain, who has written
about it to me. For she had always kept track of Sir Randolph, and knew
that he had been brought here some years ago.”

“But what proof is there that she is telling the truth?”

“This. Before she parted with the baby, she broke a sixpence in two,
sewed half of it into the baby’s clothes and kept the other half.”

“But the clothes must have disappeared long ago!”

“No: they didn’t. When the thieves found that they could not get any
ransom, they left the baby on the doorstep of an old bachelor in
Kensington, who took care of it and ultimately adopted it. I suppose he
is a sentimental person, for he kept the clothes in which he found the
child, and, what is more, he has now discovered the half-sixpence sewn
up in the little frock, just where the dying woman says it was.”

“Jolly good luck for the girl! Where is she?”

“She goes by the name of Ellen Scott, and is governess in Colonel
Follitt’s family here in Yorkshire.”

“Miss Scott! Why, I saw her at King’s

[Illustration: “‘Miss Scott! Why, I saw her at King’s Follitt a month
ago.’”]

Follitt a month ago! And young Follitt, who is with us, is one of the
Colonel’s younger sons. He can tell you all about her.”

“It’s a singular coincidence, to say the least,” answered Dr. Steele,
“but I know more about Miss Scott at present than she knows herself. In
communicating with her adoptive father I have begged him not to let her
know anything till all is quite certain; but it will be impossible to
conceal the facts from her any longer, since Sir Randolph is dead. The
relations, who believe themselves the heirs, must be informed that his
daughter has been found and will claim the estate. They must know that
as soon as they know of his death, and I cannot put off writing to
them.”

“What can I do?” inquired Bob.

“Do you know any of your Lincolnshire relations?”

“Yes, I fancy I know most of them. They’ll show fight, you may be sure.”

“Perhaps, if you explained the case to them, and showed them these
copies of the more important documents, they would change their minds.
Sir Randolph’s solicitors have been very active. We have the sworn
evidence of the woman, who is still alive, and of Mr. Herbert Scott as
to the date when the infant was left on his doorstep, and he has
produced the baby’s frock, with the half-sixpence sewn up in the hem,
and the woman has sworn to that also. Besides, the handwriting of the
letters written to the family after the fire, offering to give up the
child for a ransom, has been declared by experts to be that of the
travelling photographer, of whose writing several specimens have been
found in the village, on the backs of photographs he sold. There is
also evidence that he disappeared on the night of the fire, leaving his
van and all his belongings. In fact, everything was ready, and Sir
Randolph’s solicitors were about to begin proceedings to establish Miss
Ellen Scott’s identity as Diana Trevelyan.”

“Nice name,” observed Bob.

“Very. Are you inclined, as a member of the family, to run over to
Lincolnshire and lay the case before your cousins? If they can be
persuaded to give up their claim without a suit, a vast amount of money
will be saved--and it can only end in one way, I can assure you. There’s
not a link missing.”

“All right,” answered Trevelyan. “Who are poor Randolph’s solicitors? I
shall have to know the name and address.”

Dr. Steele handed him the neat package of copies that lay tied up on the
desk. The lawyer’s name was stamped on the outside of the first paper.

“I suppose I had better say nothing to my sister and our friends?” said
Bob in a tone of interrogation.

“I think not. Miss Scott should be informed by the solicitors.”

“She’ll have a surprise,” observed Bob, thinking of the blotched face
and red nose of the pimping governess he had seen at King’s Follitt.
“I’ll just tell my party that you wanted to inform me of poor Randolph’s
death.”

“Precisely. That will explain our interview.”

So that was the end of the ballooning adventure. After thanking Dr.
Steele very warmly for his hospitality the party left on the following
morning, the balloon having been duly packed and carted to the station
and put on the London train.

It will be clear to the most simple-minded reader that the descent of
the party in the grounds of the asylum was not the grand incident which
really led to the identification of Miss Scott by establishing the
long-sought link in the evidence. That would have been thrilling, of
course; but such things do not happen in real life, and when they do
people do not believe they do. The simple result of the coincidence was
that Bob Trevelyan took the affair in hand, and managed it so that it
was all settled very quickly and out of court, which saved ever so much
time and money, to the great disappointment of several solicitors.




CHAPTER VIII


Lady Jane Follitt had last seen the balloon driving through rain-clouds
at dusk, somewhere between Peterborough and York. It had not been nearly
such good sport as she had anticipated, for the breeze had been light
during the early part of the afternoon, and she had been obliged to go
slowly in order not to outrun the aëronauts, and when they had begun to
travel faster it had grown dark, and she could not see them even with
her searchlight! She made up her mind that there was nothing in
ballooning after all, and she was wet and tired when she got back to
London late at night, and found Claude and her husband waiting for her.
The Colonel talked of going down to King’s Follitt the next day.

“And leave me here to do my shopping alone?” said Lady Jane indignantly.
“Not much! We’ll go down in the motor on Thursday, if you don’t mind.”

She had almost always done her shopping alone, but that did not matter.
When she said “if you don’t mind” in that tone, the mild Colonel knew
his place and did his duty.

Claude’s match was not over yet, and he must stay in town another day;
Jocelyn was with the Trevelyans, and was hardly likely to get home for
twenty-four hours or more; but the Colonel was at leisure, and could not
be allowed to go home alone in order to make love to Miss Scott. Lady
Jane had never felt any anxiety about Lionel, because he knew the
governess’s father, and had been just as kind to her when she was
hideous.

So he and Ellen had another day to themselves, and though she hardly let
the girls go out of her sight, the two had plenty of opportunity of
talking together. The result of their confabulations was that Ellen was
to do her best to get away from King’s Follitt with Lady Jane’s consent,
but that if she did not succeed within a fortnight Lionel should tell
his mother that he intended to marry the girl, and if there was a
terrible fuss, then it could not be helped, that was all. Ellen, on
mature consideration, made up her mind that it would be cowardly to run
away, but that she would leave after the inevitable interview with the
infuriated Lady Jane.

That was what they both thought best, after long consideration, and they
made up their minds to do it.

Herbert Scott was determined that his adopted child should not suffer a
bitter disappointment after her expectations had been raised to the
highest pitch, and he accordingly took care that no hint of what was
coming should reach her, till all was settled beyond any possibility of
failure--at least, if that could be managed. His sense of humour, too,
was delighted by the prospect of the surprise which the change in her
prospects would produce in the Follitt household, accompanied as it
would be by the announcement of her long-standing engagement to Lionel.
But after all, the excellent Mr. Scott himself could not quite believe
that a noble estate and a good old name had been the rightful dowry of
the poor little doorstep baby he had taken in so long ago. His only fear
for the future had been lest her own father should become sane again,
as suddenly as he had gone mad, and claim his daughter; and when Dr.
Steele wrote him that old Trevelyan was dead, Herbert Scott made
incomprehensible observations aloud to himself in several oriental
dialects, not one of them expressive of regret.

Things did not turn out exactly as he expected. Lady Jane and the
Colonel came home in due time, when the shopping in London was done.
Claude returned in a very good humour from the cricket-match, for
Yorkshire had won and he himself had brought up his average; but he went
off almost immediately to ride the promised steeplechase. Jocelyn came
back one morning, rather silent and uncommunicative, to claim the fifty
pounds he had won of Lionel, and immediately departed again, saying that
he would write. He said something about having been in a madhouse, which
the others took for chaff.

Therefore, when the crisis came the two younger sons were not at home,
and it happened in this way: the Colonel lost his head, Lady Jane lost
her temper, Lionel lost his patience, and Miss Scott lost her position
as governess.

There was no doubt about Colonel Follitt’s admiration for the once
Undesirable One. He talked to her at table, he brought her books from
the library, he accidentally found himself in the way when she passed;
and one day he announced his intention of going for a walk with her and
his two daughters, as Lionel had done several times.

“That you shall not do!” said Lady Jane with severity.

“Why not, my dear?” asked her mild husband.

“It’s not decent,” answered Lady Jane with disgust. “I won’t have it!”

“Really!” cried the Colonel, with polite surprise. “If a man cannot walk
out with his own daughters----”

“Not with Miss Scott. Thank goodness, I still have some authority! The
idea of such a thing! Besides, it’s growing on you. When vice doesn’t
disappear it always grows worse with old age.”

“Old age, indeed!” The Colonel was mildly indignant.

“Now, that Miss Kirk,” Lady Jane exclaimed, not heeding him, “at least
she was pretty. No one ever denied that, I suppose. Well, that was some
excuse; but it’s positively disgusting to see a man of sixty----”

“Fifty-five,” interrupted the Colonel.

“--of nearly fifty-six devoting himself to a miserable, dowdy little rat
of a London governess, who came here with a blotchy face and a hump on
one shoulder, and her hair drawn back like a skinned rabbit’s!”

“Dear me!” exclaimed the Colonel, with exasperating mildness.

“And besides,” Lady Jane concluded, sticking up her aristocratic nose in
wrath, “she’s distinctly plebeian!”

“I’m sorry, mother, but you’re quite mistaken,” said Lionel, looking up
from his paper, and bending his brows. “She talks just as we do, and
nobody could possibly tell that she didn’t belong to our set.”

Lady Jane stared at her eldest son in surprise. They were all three in
the mess-room after luncheon. “My dear Lionel,” she retorted, with
pitying scorn, “if you don’t know a lady when you see one, I really
can’t teach you the difference, can I?”

“Miss Scott is a lady in every way,” Lionel answered, with a good deal
of emphasis, and fixing his eyes on his mother’s in an odd way.

“Good heaven!” cried Lady Jane. “I believe you’re another of her
victims!”

“I am going to marry Miss Scott in June,” Lionel said, rising suddenly,
and looking down at her and his father--for he was very tall.

“What?” cried Lady Jane, her jaw dropping.

“What?” cried the Colonel, no longer mild.

And the walls of the mess-room echoed “what” in the name of the absent
members of the family.

“Are you quite mad?” asked Lady Jane, breathless in her amazed surprise.

“Impudent puppy!” the Colonel cried, getting red in the face. “My dear,
the girl must leave the house this instant!”

“I’ll send for her and tell her so at once!”

“It’s not of the least use to get so excited,” said Lionel, calmly
sitting down and taking up his paper again. “We shall be married in
June, and there’s nothing more to be said.”

Thereupon he appeared to go on reading, without paying any more
attention to his father and mother.

“This is monstrous!” Lady Jane was beside herself. “Lionel!” She came
and stood beside his chair. “You’re not in earnest! This is some silly
attempt at a joke!”

“Drop it, my boy!” cried the Colonel, taking the cue from his wife.

“I’m not joking.” Lionel looked up quietly. “You’ll be very fond of her
some day, when you get over the idea that she’s been governess to the
girls. Really, there’s nothing to be said. I made up my mind long ago;
and as the estate is entailed you can’t even cut me off with a shilling!
Happily, you are quite powerless, for we can live very comfortably on my
five hundred a year.”

Lady Jane glared, and the Colonel put on that singularly disagreeable
expression which has come into use amongst Englishmen since they gave up
swearing as a means of showing what they are thinking about. It is a
particularly unpleasant look, and bodes evil when it appears.

“Miss Scott will go at once, of course,” Lionel added, as they said
nothing. “I only ask you not to be rude to her.”

“As if one could be rude to a governess!” cried Lady Jane, stalking off
with her head in the air and going out.

“All that Sanskrit stuff has gone to your head, my boy,” said the
Colonel, following her.

Lady Jane went to her morning room and rang the bell. Her hand trembled
a little. “Ask Miss Scott to come to me before going out with the young
ladies,” she said to the footman.

Ellen lost no time in answering the summons, and appeared dressed for
walking, and wearing a plain grey felt hat, which happened to be very
becoming. As soon as she entered, she saw that Lady Jane was in a rage,
and guessed that it concerned her.

“My son has just given me to understand that he has--er--agreed to marry
you. What have you to say to this amazing statement?”

Miss Scott looked much taller than usual, and held her head quite as
high as Lady Jane herself; but she answered very quietly, and almost
gently. “Yes,” she said, “it’s quite true. That’s all I have to say.”

“And you have the assurance to tell me so to my face?” cried Lady Jane.

“Oh, yes, since it’s true,” answered the young girl sweetly.

“It’s not to be believed!”

Lady Jane’s face was as hard as a portrait done in enamel; her eyes
glittered like pale sapphires, and she began to walk up and down the
room, looking straight in front of her.

“I’m afraid you must believe it, unless your son changes his mind,” said
Miss Scott with great gentleness.

“Oh, he shall change his mind! Never fear! A governess! There are laws
to prevent such things--I’m sure there are!”

“And a foundling, too,” said Ellen, more sweetly than ever. “I’m sure
you will think that makes it much worse,” she added, as Lady Jane
stopped suddenly in her walk and glared at her. “Yes, I was left on Mr.
Scott’s doorstep early one morning when I was a baby, and he adopted me
and gave me his name, and called me Ellen. It’s rather dreadful, isn’t
it?”

“Dreadful! It’s vile, the way you have played on his feelings in secret
and led him to this! But, thank Heaven, he is my son. He must have some
sense, somewhere!”

“He has a great deal,” said Miss Scott, unmoved. “I’m sure of it.”

“If anything could make matters worse, it is your brazen assurance,”
cried Lady Jane, beside herself. “There is no reason why I should put up
with it another moment, and I shall expect you to leave the house in an
hour. Do you understand?”

“I was going to ask your leave to do so,” answered Ellen; “for the
truth is, I have some very urgent business in town, and my solicitors
have written begging me to come at once.”

Lady Jane’s face assumed an expression of blank astonishment. “Your
solicitors! What nonsense is this?”

“In view of the fact that Lionel has told you about our engagement, it
may have some importance--even in your eyes.”

There was something so extraordinarily calm about the young person’s
manner, that Lady Jane began to take another view of the matter. “I
believe you must be an escaped lunatic,” she said with deliberation, and
fixing her cold eyes on the governess’s pretty face.

But nothing happened; she did not shrink and cower under the glance, as
Lady Jane supposed that an escaped lunatic would, on being found out.

“Perhaps you would like to see the last letter I have received?” said
Miss Scott.

Lady Jane hesitated, for it seemed beneath her dignity to prolong the
interview. She would have turned her back on the governess if she had
not been made really curious by her calm and dignified manner, and by
her allusion to “solicitors.” Just then, too, it occurred to the injured
matron that the girl might have committed some offence for which she was
to be tried, and that the “solicitors” were those whom her adopted
father had engaged for the defence. This was ingenious, if it was
nothing else. Lady Jane, who was both very angry and at the same time
very curious, suddenly contracted her eyelids, as if she were
short-sighted, and held her head higher than ever. “I am willing to
look at the letter,” she said, “on the mere chance that it may show
your--er--atrocious conduct--in a somewhat less--er--unfavourable
light!”

Miss Scott smiled sweetly, and produced a large envelope from the inside
of her coat--for, being a governess, she possessed a pocket. She handed
the paper to Lady Jane, who saw at a glance that it was a genuine
solicitor’s letter, from a highly respectable firm of whom she had often
heard. The envelope was addressed to “Miss Ellen Scott,” but when Lady
Jane took out and unfolded the contents, she saw that they were
addressed to “Miss Diana Trevelyan.”

“Trevelyan?” she cried angrily. “Diana Trevelyan? What absurdity is
this? What have you to do with any Diana Trevelyan, pray?”

[Illustration: “‘You? The daughter of Sir Randolph? You’re mad!’”]

“It’s me,” Miss Scott answered patiently, in a small voice.

“You?” Lady Jane’s eyes glittered and glared again.

“Yes. I was a doorstep baby, as I told you; and now they’ve found out at
last that I am Diana Trevelyan, the only child of Sir Randolph, who died
in an insane asylum a few days ago.”

“You? The daughter of Sir Randolph? You’re mad!”

“No, I’m not mad, though my father was. If you will only read the
letter, you will understand. You see, all his Lincolnshire estates come
to me, so it makes rather a difference, doesn’t it?”

“Rather a difference!”

No words could describe Lady Jane’s tone as she repeated the words. At
the mere thought that, instead of speaking out her irate mind to a poor
little governess with whom her son had been silly enough to fall in
love, she had been railing at Miss Diana Trevelyan, a charming girl and
an heiress, quite as good as herself, and the most desirable
daughter-in-law she could wish for, she suddenly got red in the face,
and buried herself in the documents, in which she presently became
absorbed.

As she read the wonderful story, and learned that the other Lincolnshire
Trevelyans had thought it best not to question Ellen’s right--or
Diana’s--her wrath subsided, and joy rose in its place, as it would in
any mother’s heart, over what could only be a genuine love match, though
it had turned out so vastly advantageous. At last she folded the many
sheets together and put them back into the envelope, which she held in
one hand while she covered her eyes with the other for a moment. “I
don’t quite know what to say,” she said simply, and then looked up with
a rather shy smile. “I was awfully nasty, I know. I’m sure you would
have been a very good wife to Lionel without a name or a fortune, my
dear. I can’t imagine why it seemed so dreadful to me five minutes ago!
I was quite stupidly angry, and you must forgive me, please. You will,
won’t you?”

She was almost pathetic in her defeat, though she was quite ridiculous
too, and knew it.

Ellen laughed gaily. “My dear Lady Jane,” she said, “I’ll forgive you
with all my heart if you’ll only forgive me for something much worse
that I did to you?”

“I’ll forgive you anything--I’m so happy!” answered the elder woman,
smiling.

“I’ve been a fairly good governess to the girls, haven’t I?” asked the
young girl. “And well-behaved, too? And if I wanted it, you’d give me a
good character, wouldn’t you? That is, if I hadn’t fallen in love with
your eldest son?”

“Oh, that wouldn’t have mattered,” said Lady Jane. “It was his falling
in love with you that I couldn’t stand! Of course I would give you a
good character!”

“Thank you. Now I’ll make my confession. I used to be good at
theatricals, and when I saw your advertisement I made up for the place.”

“Made up? It was all a sham?”

Lady Jane started in surprise.

“The limp was a sham, the hump was a little pillow, the blotches were
liquid rouge, my eyes never wander unless I choose to make them do it,
and I had never worn my hair like that in my life! Can you forgive me
for having cheated you all, when I read your advertisement? I suppose it
was just devilry that made me do it--and I wanted to see more of Lionel,
since we were engaged. After all, I was quite fit for the place, wasn’t
I? All I had to do was to make myself thoroughly undesirable; and I
did!”

“And to think that I wasted all that good lotion on you!” cried Lady
Jane, laughing.

She would have thought the whole trick an abominable fraud on the part
of Ellen Scott, but quite entered into the fun of the practical joke,
since it had been played by Miss Diana Trevelyan. After all, she never
made any pretence of being magnanimous or bursting with noble
sentiments. She was just an ordinary woman of the world, and a very good
mother, who had been horrified at the idea that her eldest son should
marry badly, and was delighted to find that he was going to marry well
after all; and let any natural mother who would not feel just as she
did, find fault with her and call her worldly!

That is the story of that Undesirable Governess they had at King’s
Follitt last year, and it explains why Lionel and Jocelyn were married
on the same day to two Trevelyan girls who were only very distantly
related. In a nice story-book it would of course have been the penniless
younger son who would have married the governess-heiress, and the heir
of King’s Follitt would have married Anne Trevelyan, who was not
particularly well off. But in real life things do not happen in that
way, and yet people are happy just the same--when they are.

The darker side of the whole affair was that, after Ellen turned into
somebody else, those girls ran perfectly wild, and fell back into their
old ways of poaching and exchanging game for chocolates with the
postman; and they sat up in the King’s Oak by the lodge and peppered the
passing horses on the Malton road with catapults, and potted rooks, and
rode steeplechases in the park on the best horses in the stable; and
they strenuously did all those things which they should have left
undone, to the total exclusion of the other things, till Lady Jane felt
that she was going mad, and it looked as if no one but the matron of a
police station could ever be satisfactory as a governess at King’s
Follitt.







End of Project Gutenberg's The Undesirable Governess, by F. Marion Crawford