Jane forgot Mrs. Harwood, whom she had been in the act of advising and consoling, and Julia, who was her special care. She could scarcely restrain herself.
“It is too much for Miss Harwood to sing and play both,” she said, with a sudden impulse, dropping her work upon the floor, half rising as if to rush to the rescue. Her own movement, however, brought her to herself; for what right had she, a stranger and a hireling, to interfere?
“Miss Summerhayes!” said Mrs. Harwood.
As this was all that was said, Janet detached her eyes from the scene at the piano, and looked at the old lady in the chair. Mrs. Harwood was talking energetically with her eyes and gestures, though she said nothing. She indicated Julia with a glance, then looked towards the door. She put her plump hands together with a little pantomimic prayer. Janet saw and understood, and sighed. She wanted to have a hand in the music; she wanted to watch the story which was going on, which as yet she did not understand. But no. Her duty lay in another direction. It was the first time that she had felt her chains.
“Julia, come, come; it is our time,” she said briskly.
Miss Harwood at the piano, who had her back turned, took no notice of the little commotion of the withdrawal; but Mr. Meredith turned round, still singing, and gave Janet a look out of those eyes which she had declared to herself were too black, too bright, too ostentatiously fringed with eyelashes—a look which meant respectful regret, a tinge of remonstrance, a veiled entreaty to stay, a sort ofau revoirunspoken but eloquent. He could not make more than a slight inclination of his head, as he was singing, but the effect was that of the most deferential bow. Janet was taken altogether by surprise. Had he appreciated her position all in a moment, read her abilities in her eyes, longed to have her at the piano as she longed to be there? or was it a mere impulse of subjugation, the instinct of the conqueror who desired another victim? She was so startled that her heart jumped up suddenly like a bird as she left the room, and made one or two big beats in her ears. And then she laughed to herself apparently without any meaning at all.
“Miss Summerhayes! why did you laugh as we came upstairs?”
“Oh!” said Janet, quite restored from that momentary impression. “I don’t know. Because it is curious to come into the middle of a story; it is like beginning a book, as you do sometimes, at the third volume. One wonders what has happened before, as well as what is going to happen now.”
“You think that’s a story!” cried Julia, with scorn; “because Gussy’s a fool, and that man—I can’t endure that man.”
“You make that too easy for anyone to see. I think you made a sound like what they do in the theatre.”
“I hissed him,” said Julia, her lowering eyebrows closing down over her eyes. “I always do. He can’t bear to be hissed. He is just like an actor: it makes him mad, and that is why I do it, and I always shall. I don’t care what anyone says.”
“That is a pity,” said Janet; “for it will not harm him, but you. You forget that people care very little for the opinion of a girl at your age, especially when it is rudely expressed.”
“They don’t care much for your opinion,” said Julia, furiously.
“No; I did not expect it; and I have no opinion, except that you must learn to be a gentlewoman—if that can be learnt—or else I must go away.”
Julia received this, as she usually did Janet’s remonstrances, with a look of rage, a flush of shame, and then a sudden self-subdual.
“You want to go away,” she said. “You are the only nice one that has ever been here; and you want to go and leave me. I know you do. You’ll go before Dolff comes home, and then he’ll never know you, and will think—will just think I am a stupid and don’t know anything, as they all do!”
“Well, my dear child,” said Janet, who understood this broken speech perfectly well, and knew that she was being represented to “Dolff” in the brightest colors, a thing by no means indifferent to her, “they are not very far wrong if they think so; for a girl who hisses—even in the theatre——”
“I did once,” cried Julia, “in the theatre! They had a hideous ballet in the pantomime like what one reads of in books—a woman making a show of herself—oh!” The girl’s cheeks blazed crimson at the thought. “And I hissed—like this.” Here Julia uttered a sound, in comparison with which a whole serpent-house in highest exasperation would have retired defeated, with the whole force of her youthful energy and breath. “Gussy pinched me black and blue to stop me, and I wouldn’t. They never would take me to the theatre again.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Janet “So now you hiss the people who come to call.”
“Only Charley Meredith,” said Julia. “And,” she added, subduing her tones, “if he came in the morning I should not mind: but he comes at night without being invited, with his music, as if mamma was obliged to have him whether she likedor not. And he gives himself such airs, as if he knew that Gussy—you think I don’t care for Gussy, Miss Summerhayes—but I do. I could kill her when she looks silly like that! A woman! to let a man see that she——oh! I could kill her when she looks at him like that!”
“That is a pleasant way of showing how much you care for her,” said Janet. “It is quite natural that at fourteen you should think you know best; but if I hear you hiss again,”—the governess kissed the tips of her fingers—“good-bye, my dear; that’s all that there will be to say.”
“You say that to beat me down,” cried Julia. “You don’t really care, not a bit, whether I behave myself or not. I am not sure that you are any better than Charley Meredith. I don’t know that there is not just a pair of you. Well, then, do it if you like, there! take him away from Gussy, break everybody’s heart, make Dolff think me a stupid for all I’ve said. I can see in your eyes that’s what you’d like to do.”
“You have made me out a very pretty programme,” said Janet, laughing. “I think I shall begin by looking over your exercises, and giving you double black marks for everything. We need not have come upstairs so early but for that pretty habit of yours; and, for my part, I would rather listen to the music than to a little girl storming. Oh, yes, my dear, I know you are taller than I am, but that makes no difference. Be quiet; we can hear it mounting up now that I’ve opened the window a little. Ah! bravo! that was well done.”
“Do you really care for that squalling?” Julia demanded, with a mixture of wonder and scorn.
Janet was standing by the window which she had opened. The school-room was over the drawing-room, though on the second floor, and in the quiet of the night Mr. Meredith’s fine voice came out like the blast of a silver trumpet. The night was mild and very still, and perhaps Janet’s youthful bosom was still a little fluttered by that sudden surprise which had made her heart beat. She leaned a little out, listening, with a natural self-pity that she was not there, and realization of the different fate of Gussy, to whom music and love and all the softnesses of life were open, while she was sent away out of sight with a naughty child. Janet had far too much strength to give in or permit anyone to see that she suffered from this, nor, indeed, did she suffer more than the vague and momentary sensation of being at a disadvantage. But she leaned out to listen with a little wistfulness, impatient of the childish vehemence, and as yet but little awakened to the deeper nature of her unmanageable pupil. This pensive mood, however, wassoon to be interrupted. In the very midst of the liquid notes ascending from below, there came suddenly, as if it rent the air, a wild and wailing cry—the cry as of a spirit in pain. It seemed to Janet to rise almost from her side, close by. She started back from the window and turned round with a scared and terrified exclamation,
“What is that? What is that?”
For a moment it occurred to her that some terrible accident or hurt must have happened to the girl by her side.
“I—don’t know,” said Julia, stammering as if she could not get out the words. But she was not terrified as Janet was. The governess did not notice this at first in her own panic. She ran to the door of Julia’s room, from which direction the sound seemed to come, and flung it open crying, “Who is there? Who is there?” then shut it again in terror of what she might see.
“Oh, run and fetch some one! oh, go and alarm the house, Julia! there must be something dreadful in there.”
“There’s nothing,” said Julia. “What are you making such a fuss about? It’s—a boy outside—they make such hideous noises—it’s——”
She stopped, for the same sound was repeated, this time lower and further off, as it seemed—a cry of pain dropping into a low prolonged wail. Janet rushed to the school-room door and out upon the staircase, calling for help, for some one to come. She was wild with alarm. There was no doubt in her mind that some wretched creature, a madman, probably, had got into the rooms.
But all was quiet in the house below, the doors all shut, everybody occupied with their own business, singing going on in the drawing-room, talk in the servants’ apartments downstairs—nothing it would seem had been disturbed but Janet alone.
“It’s nothing,” repeated Julia. “Oh, Miss Summerhayes, come back, please, and don’t make a fuss. Mamma is so angry if there’s any fuss made. If I go into my room and look all round, and convince you there’s nobody, will that do? There’s nobody, I know. It’s either a boy passing outside, or it’s an owl or something that lives under the ivy in the wing. Mamma knows. If you ask her to-morrow she’ll tell you; but, oh, for goodness’ sake, Miss Summerhayes, don’t make a fuss to-night.”
“Your mother knows? Do you mean that—it has been heard before?”
“You look as if you thought it was a ghost,” said Julia,who, however, was very pale. “We have no ghosts in our house.”
“It was like the cry of a mad creature—it was——Julia, if it comes again I can’t bear it. It must be some madman who has got in.”
“If it’s a madman he can’t get near us,” cried Julia, “for he’s in the wing.”
Janet came back into the school-room, still trembling with her fright. She dropped into a chair, unable to support herself.
“You know—you know what it is,” she said, faintly.
“I know—it’s something in the wing. It does no harm. Sometimes it will cry like that—oh, once in a year, perhaps. It can’t do any harm. Oh, Miss Summerhayes, do be reasonable when I tell you. What does it matter? I don’t know what you mean, to be so taken up with their squalling and shouting, and in such a state when you hear a cry. I don’t care either for one or the other,” Julia said.
It cannot be said that Janet showed much interest in the “squalling and shouting” of which her pupil was so contemptuous after this. The two changed theirrôlescompletely for the rest of the evening, during which Julia, though not without a titter for her companion’s weakness, soothed and patronized Miss Summerhayes, and addressed to her many philosophical admonitions, which naturally were much more self-confident even than the exhortations of Janet, in themselves by no means deficient in the certainty of youth.
“What can it matter to us,” said Julia, “what a noise is?—unless you happen to like noises which people make, squalling at the top of their voices and call music. A noise can’t hurt you; it can’t do you any harm. You hear it, and that’s all—especially when it’s only like a voice. I am not fond of thunder, myself, for a thunderbolt might fall on the house or crush you; but a cry—what does it matter? People are always crying out, or making some nasty noise. You should pay no attention to it. I never pay any attention; it is not worth while. Why, you might spend your life thinking of such things, if you were to be disturbed by every sound you hear.”
This discourse did not satisfy Janet or even calm her mind, but she reflected after a while that it was not the part of a governess to put visionary terrors into the mind of her pupil, and so far recovered herself with an effort as to satisfy Julia that it was safe to go to bed and leave Miss Summerhayes. Poor little Janet, when left alone, felt for the first time how terrible it was to be so young, so impressionable, and amongstrangers. She dared not run downstairs, as a girl at home would, to shake off her terrors by confiding them to some one who could authoritatively calm and reassure her. Mrs. Harwood had been very kind to her governess, but to go down again after she had been dismissed, to meet Gussy’s astonished look turning round from the piano, and the mother’s suspicious glance which would ask what she wanted, why she came?—was impossible to Janet. She felt to-night, for the first time, what it was to be a governess, although to-night, for almost the first time, she had realized what she had expected when she came out into the world, how amusing it was to watch a story going on. How soon had all interest in the story disappeared from her mind in the face of this terror which froze her very blood! What was it?—was it a spirit or a living creature in pain? Where was it?—in this tranquil house, as Julia seemed to allow? And worst and most dreadful question of all—would it come again? This last thought was the one that kept all her faculties awake. Might it at any moment burst once more out of the quiet? Janet thought that if she had to undergo that moment of horror again she must go mad or die. She was afraid to go to bed—afraid to close her eyes—lest she should be awakened by that cry. The singing went on late downstairs, and Janet listened anxiously to the departing of the visitor, the bolting of the door behind him, the little bustle as Mrs. Harwood was wheeled to her room on the ground floor, and Gussy came upstairs. But she did not come as far as the school-room, which she sometimes did to see if all was well. It was too late to disturb any one—to wake up the sleepers. Janet heard Miss Harwood coming upstairs singing softly over to herself her part in one of the duets. Gussy was happy; no alarm or sense of desolation was in her.
“If I were happy like that I would come upstairs to see how the poor little governess, all alone, was getting on,” Janet said to herself, opening her eyes in the dark. But, indeed, she would have done nothing of the kind. She would have been perhaps more indifferent than Gussy was to the governess in causeless trouble, feeling “out of it”—or else in a visionary panic thinking that she had heard a ghost.
The night wore away gradually, and nothing happened. When it was between three and four, Janet, worn out, fell fast asleep. She slept till the breakfast-bell rang, and had to hurry her dressing and hasten downstairs with an apology, wondering at herself and her own foolish terror in the red light of the wintry morning. Gussy was very ready, it wasevident, to be questioned about last night. She began her self by expressing her distress that Janet had been hastened away for “thatchild,” and narrated to her with subdued triumph how many “things” Mr. Meredith and she had gone through, and what good practice it was.
“The Harwoods generally are so unmusical,” Gussy said; “I never did get any encouragement at home. But fortunately mamma likes Charley, and he may do what he pleases. I do enjoy a musical evening so. Hasn’t he a delicious voice?”
“It is a charming voice,” said Janet.
“And he is so well trained. To sing with him it is like getting a lesson. He wanted to know whether you were musical, but I said I feared——”
“I used to be thought pretty good for accompaniments,” said Janet.
“Oh, really!” but Gussy did not receive this statement with much delight. “Perhaps you’ll help me to practise my part,” she said, and returned to sound the praises of Charley.
Janet would not introduce the subject of her own terrors, and if she had been ever so intent upon doing so, there was no opportunity, for Charley and his songs and his perfections left no room for any other discourse. And when Mrs. Harwood appeared matters were not much better. The old lady remarked that Janet was pale, and feared that she had not been able to sleep for the singing.
“The fact is that Mr. Meredith has not been in London for a long time, and I could not cut them short, could I, the first night?”
To describe the impatience with which Janet heard all this would not be easy. She said to herself, what was Mr. Meredith to her? What were his songs, his attentions, the grief of his absence, the joy of his return? She listened with a great eagerness to interrupt, to break through this eternal burden of the self-occupied to whom their own little affairs were everything, with her own questions. But when Mrs. Harwood’s voice stopped Janet did not find hers. What could she say?
“I heard a dreadful cry last night. What was it? You know what it was!” It seemed to her when she turned this question in her mind that it was a thing impossible to say. “I heard—last night,” she began.
“Ah, the singing!” cried both ladies together. “I hope it did not keep you from your sleep, my dear,” said Mrs. Harwood. And, “I’m sure you could not hear me, and Charley’s voice is always a pleasure,” cried Gussy.
Janet’s mouth was closed, and she could say no more.
Janet’slife seemed to herself to change from this day, though no one else seemed aware of any difference, and all its outward expressions went on as before. For a few nights she was afraid to sit alone upstairs, and hurried to bed in the hope of getting to sleep, and thus avoiding any repetition of the cry which had so rung through and through her on the night of Mr. Meredith’s first appearance; but, as the days and nights passed in perfect tranquillity, this scare passed away from her mind, and she began to be able to explain to herself that it must have been some boy in the road outside, belated and anxious to make a sensation in that still neighborhood, or perhaps that fancy had exaggerated the fantastic wailings of a love-sick cat into something portentous and terrible. Both these things were possible, but that anything mysterious could exist in this comfortable, modern, respectable house, where everything went as on velvet by carefully kept rule and order, was an idea too ridiculous to be entertained. At night, it is true, Janet had various fallings back from this confidence, and reminded herself with renewed panic that Julia had heard and had not been astonished as she was, but evidently was aware of some explanation which she did not give. These grew fainter and fainter, however, as one week passed after another, and nothing occurred.
There was one thing, however, which Janet only remarked after this period, though she was afterwards assured that it was no secret, but might have been seen from the first day, and that was the appearance of a man-servant in the house where none but women ever waited upon the family. She met him one day going across the hall, a respectable, serious man of middle age, just such a butler as Mrs. Harwood ought to have had. But the ladies had no butler; they had a highly-respectable parlor-maid, just such as, failing the butler, a family in St. John’s Wood, entirelycomme il faut, must have had—tall, staid, good-looking, but not too good-looking, well-dressed, and thirty-five. The man, who had all the air of perfect familiarity with the house, and who was in indoor dress, with noiseless shoes, went across the hall from the servant’s quarters towards the side upon which was the wing, an apparently unoccupied part of the dwelling.
After that first meeting, which startled her, Janet saw this man again and again. There was no explanation of him, he was never seen but in these chance encounters, yet he was no secret, nor was his presence in any way concealed. What, after all, had a stranger to do with it? It was nothing to Janet. But her strong sense of spectatorship, and the curiosity of imagination which made her keen to find indications of a story anywhere or everywhere, caused a half-conscious groping on the part of the governess among unexplained incidents. It was some time, however, before she began to associate the mysterious man-servant with the alarming outcry which had almost, she thought, deprived her of her wits, ringing as it did into the silence of the night. After a few weeks had passed, she asked herself if, indeed, she ever had heard it at all—whether it was not a delusion of her senses, the reverberation of some well-known and vulgar sound. Needless to say that Janet had read “Northanger Abbey,” and had been taught to smile at the investigations of our dear little Catherine, and their amusing issue: though, to tell the truth, her sympathy in Catherine Morland’s thirst for romantic adventure had been more strong than her amusement in the result, which disappointed her a little too.
However, not even a romantic imagination disposed towards discoveries can survive the uneventful progress of weeks in which nothing happens. And Janet meantime had the other story going on before her eyes which she could study at her ease. Mr. Charles Meredith and his visits became now the chief interest of life in the house in St. John’s Wood. He dined once or twice, but only in company with another visitor; and on those occasions Janet did not form one of the party. Gussy explained that it would “put out the table.”
“If I were to invite gentlemen for you and Ju, it would make quite a party, and mamma does not like parties when Dolff is away. And then Ju is too young to dine when there is company,” said Miss Harwood.
“Oh, you must not think of me!” Janet would reply; but when she heard the gentlemen arrive, and the increased sound of voices as the servants went out and in of the dining-room, and the little cheerful commotion, it is undeniable that Janet remembered Mrs. Bland’s little sermons about the fate of a governess.
She did not like it. She had never been left out in her life before. Janet was not shy; she had always been used to take a somewhat privileged place in the little society she was acquainted with. She could talk; she was not afraid of anybodywho might drift into the little world of Clover; and she loved variety, which is a thing not permitted to governesses. On these occasions supper was brought up to the school-room for Miss Summerhayes and her pupil. It was brought late, and they had to wait and yawn on opposite sides of the table for the cold and tardy meal. On such occasions it was difficult to make herself amusing to Julia, or to find Julia amusing. It was dull. It produced a certain mortification in Janet’s mind to find that she cared. She said to herself, with a little bitterness of which she was ashamed, that she had no doubt it was a very dull party, and that the two strangers were not in the least interesting. She recalled to herself her previous conviction, that to be left alone to do what she pleased, to read a novel or write a letter, would be a pleasant relief. No, it was not so; she wanted to be in the dining-room with the rest, hearing what was said, even if she had to remember her own position and take little part. She wanted to see how the drama was going on, and how the hero looked when there was some one to compare him with. That scene would glide in her imagination in front of her novel, with the attraction of a pleasure out of reach. And Julia was a dull companion on these occasions. She yawned and wondered when they would bring the supper.
“It’s disgusting to be kept so long waiting, and all the things like stones when they do come,” Julia would say; “I shall complain to mamma. If all the others are so busy, Vicars might bring it up, once in a way.”
“Who is Vicars?” said Janet.
“Oh, he is the man; he never goes into the dining-room except when Dolff is here—but he might bring up our supper if all the rest are so busy. As if there was any reason to make such a fuss! Two men to dinner! You would think there were twenty, all fine ladies and gentlemen, to see how Gussy goes on.”
“They are probably great friends, and more important than twenty ladies and gentlemen,” said Janet, with her most correct governess air.
“Oh, you know well enough! It is Charley Meredith, and they will caterwaul afterwards till it makes me quite ill to hear them. And Gussy will look so silly. Oh, why does a woman look so silly when there is nonsense like that going on?”
“It is generally the man who is supposed to look silly,” said Janet. Involuntarily she thought of poor Dr. Harding and his proposal; and the hard-hearted young woman laughed in spite of herself.
“What are you laughing at? You are remembering something. Tell me, tell me, Miss Summerhayes! I suppose,” said Julia, with deep discrimination, “that the man looks silly when it is he who wants it most. Now, here it is Gussy who wants it most.”
“Julia, you have no right to discuss your sister.”
“Oh, but you can’t stop me doing it!” said Julia, with composure; “you can stop me when—when I’m silly myself. I was a great fool, I know. I thought once I could drive you away—no, I didn’t want to drive you away. I wanted to get the upper hand; but you’ve got the upper hand of me, and I don’t mind now. However, that’s quite different. This is a free country, and I can say what I please of Gussy. I say that it’s she——”
“As it is a free country, you can’t compel me to listen,” said Janet; “but there is one thing in which it is not a free country, and that is that you are not permitted to be ill-bred. It is not allowed to be vulgar.”
“Oh!” cried Julia, coloring to her eyes, but affecting to laugh, “as if there were not hundreds and thousands?”
Janet shrugged her little shoulders in a manner which her pupil, rebellious, but admiring, thought irresistible.
“Out in the streets, perhaps: so are there applewomen, and people who sell matches. But in good time here comes the tray, and something for you to do.”
Janet, however, was not far from being of Julia’s opinion. Miss Harwood, who had been so calm, who had explained that the quiet family life so unbroken, the long evenings of needlework and talk, might appear dull to Janet, but were never dull to her mother and herself, now went through these evenings as in a dream. Meredith came twice, sometimes three times, in a week, after dinner, as he had done on his first appearance. He had privileges which were extended to no one else, and it was never known on which evening he would appear. He even took pains, Janet thought, to have no rule, to appear suddenly when he was not looked for. But to this spectator, whose attention was fixed upon Gussy, as on the heroine of the drama, it was very easily apparent that there was no evening on which he was not expected. She worked, she talked, she made her little disquisitions as usual, but there was a certain fixed attitude of her head, a little almost imperceptible pause now and then in the movements of her hands, which showed that she was listening for the summons at the door, the step outside. In the quietness of the semi-rural suburban road the step of the rare passenger was sometimes heard evenoutside the garden wall. Sometimes Mrs. Harwood would say,
“I wonder if that is Charley Meredith?” to which Gussy would reply, with beautiful composure,
“Oh, no; he is always engaged on Thursdays!” or, “This is never one of his free nights.”
But it was not lost either upon Janet or Julia that her hands were for a moment still, that her downcast eyes were fixed not on her work, and her entire frame rigid with intent listening. The attitude relaxed in a moment when the welcome sound of the bell pealed into the silence, a little faint sigh of ease and happiness came from the bottom of her heart, her head regained its easy poise. Whether the mother also saw these indications of supreme suspense and then of delightful relief, even Janet, whom no circumstance escaped, could not tell. Perhaps, like Gussy, she thought that the visitor was of more account than the other bystanders believed him to be.
A little of the same enchantment hung over Gussy through all the ordinary affairs of life. There was a liquid softness in her eyes that had not been there before; her want of color, which was her great deficiency, seemed to be half compensated be the faintest rose-flush of feeling and sensibility which had come to her, no one could tell how. Was it a sign of better health, greater vigor, than her tranquil temperament usually enjoyed? Her mother said so, rejoicing over the fact that Gussy was “so well.”
“She has quite a color,” the visitors said. “What a good thing you went to Malvern this year; it has quite set Augusta up.”
But the governess and her pupil knew it was not Malvern. The piano in the larger drawing-room was always open now, the lights were always prepared, and Gussy practiced her songs in the morning with a devotion for which Janet, a little moved by theesprit de corps, and unwilling that a woman should betray herself, blushed sometimes when the unwearying watchfulness of Julia, to whom no such awakening had come, pointed out the performance going on below.
“She’s practising again,” Julia would say, in the midst of a lesson.
“She knows how necessary it is,” cried quick-witted Janet. “I wish you were half as sensible.”
But these little snubs, which were frequent, did not turn aside Julia’s keen perceptions or break the unspoken sympathy of spectatorship that was between the two.
Julia, however, made no further demonstration of her disliketo the visitor, and Mrs. Harwood’s satisfaction with the “good influence” which Miss Summerhayes had acquired over the rebellious girl went on increasing.
“She looks no more than a girl herself—and so she is, quite young, and never was out before—but her power over that unmanageable child is something wonderful. You know, my dear, what poor Ju was.”
“Oh, yes, I know what Ju was!” replied, with fervor, the friend to whom Mrs. Harwood confided her satisfaction. With too much fervor, perhaps; for when the person we blame is our own child, we desire no warmth of conviction, but rather a good-natured deprecation, as who should say, “I never remarked it,” or a warmer assertion, “She was always very nice to me.” But the mother’s confidant was not enlightened in this case. She acknowledged her perfect consciousness of the demerits of Ju.
This checked Mrs. Harwood in full flow.
“She had always a great many defects of manner, but she was right in her heart, poor child, and as soon as you could get to that—— Well! Miss Summerhayes has just that knack. She divined my poor Julia’s warm heart, and to see her now you never would believe there had ever been any trouble. She was always more sensible than most girls, but self-willed and too frank. Now, I think you would say there are few girls with better manners, and all that little thing’s doing, who really sometimes looks far more a child than Ju herself.”
“Dear me,” said the visitor; “but I am glad, with my houseful of sons, that I have not got such a fascinating personage. What is so good for the girls might be dangerous for the boys. When do you expect Dolff to come back?”
“Not before Christmas,” said Mrs. Harwood; but she did not take the good-natured insinuation; she was too full of her present subject. “He will be so delighted with the improvement in his sister. Dolff is very fond of his sister; he is so domestic. Sometimes it is a little difficult to get him back from Oxford. They enjoy themselves so much in their college with all their friends about them. But, when he does come home, he is so good in taking Julia about and giving her treats. Julia was always his favorite, even when she was most hard to deal with. He will be quite delighted now.”
“And Miss Summerhayes will go away, I suppose, for her holidays?” said the far-seeing friend.
Mrs. Harwood looked across the room at Gussy, with a half-alarmed, half-inquiring glance. But Gussy, who was once so quick to perceive all possible imbroglios—Gussy shook herhead. She had been thinking with satisfaction that Miss Summerhayes would amuse Dolff, that her own pursuits need not be interrupted for the sake of her brother. She shook her head in answer to her mother’s unspoken question.
“Oh, no; she never thought of wanting a holiday so soon,” Gussy said.
And so, unmoved by any warning, the Harwood family rushed on their fate.
Thesemusical evenings became now the central events in the life of the house in St. John’s Wood. When they did not occur, and the evening passed in its former quiet fashion, with the mother knitting in her chair, and Gussy and Janet on the other side at their work, and Julia on the rug with her book, it was to all of them as if life were arrested, and that day did not count. Everything went on as usual, but nothing was of any consequence. That this should be the case to the heroine of the drama who had the firstrôleto play, and whose future might perhaps be entirely shaped and colored by what took place on these occasions, was natural enough; but it may be thought strange that an entire household should hang, as it were, on the comings and goings of a presumed lover, whose actions could affect materially only one individual, and to whom one at least of the lookers-on was indifferent and one hostile. But the hostility quickened the interest, and the indifference did not take away from it. The course of a wooing is always an excitement to a household of women. It is “as good as a play.” After it is concluded, in that moment of absorption when two engaged people follow each other about, and parade their special privileges and rights, it becomes odious, we are ready to allow; and the only desire in the minds of all reasonable persons is to get the marriage hurried on and the turtle-doves disposed of. But when all is still in the mists of uncertainty, when it cannot be asserted that the entire fabric of the drama may not melt away again, and new complications take place, then it is that the spectators gather round, and every woman keeps a watch under her eyelids upon the progress of the affair. This is especially the case when there is little doubt about the sentiments of one of the parties, and more so still when that one is the woman. The story will then acquire a sometimes painful interest, and the women whowatch will feel something of humiliation, something perhaps of resentment, against the girl who has given her affections without sufficient warrant, or the man who is dull enough not to perceive, or wicked enough to disregard, the gift thus bestowed upon him.
Thus the party of women in Mrs. Harwood’s drawing-room were diversely moved, but all to the same end. The mother herself felt nothing but anxiety about her child. She was not an enthusiast for Charley Meredith, though she liked him well enough. His blue-black hair, his fine moustache, his bloom of roses or wax, his seductive eyes, and fine voice were not much to the old lady. And she thought him too fond of music and society, not sufficiently anxious to establish his practice and make his name known at the Bar, which was to be his means of living. As she sat and knitted, and listened, and looked on, her mind was full of calculations, often gone over, as to how much the two could scrape together between them to begin housekeeping upon, and whether it would do? Mrs. Harwood naturally knew to a penny what her daughter’s fortune would be, although she was not without anxieties lying deep in her soul, even upon that point, which nobody guessed. And as she was well acquainted with his Aunt Owen and his other relatives in Wales, and knew how the family had been “left” at his father’s death, she had a tolerably good guess as to what young Meredith was worth in the way of money, and wished it had been more. Still, if, when this period of courtship was over, he would more or less give up music, and devote himself to work, what with Gussy’s little fortune, and the remnants of what he had from his father, they might do. It was not a very brilliant conclusion, but yet it might do. When she had come to the end of one such long course of calculations and thoughts, Mrs. Harwood would nod her head and say, “That is very pretty; what is it? Who is it by?”—questions of which in a general way no one took any notice; and then she would begin with her calculations again.
Janet naturally approached the question from an entirely different side. She said to herself that there was not the least doubt about Miss Harwood’s sentiments, but she herself was generally treated as if she were a cabbage on these musical evenings. There was no notice taken of her. Though they were so kind in all other ways, and though even Gussy never wavered in her friendliness on other occasions, on these she ignored Janet altogether. Mr. Meredith made her a bow when he shook hands with Mrs. Harwood, and, if he were not absolutely in the middle of a song, he would make a rush toopen the door for her when Julia and she retired with their candles. But that was all, and Gussy went on all the time with her accompaniment (which she played so badly!), and took no notice, except to call him back sometimes, the governess thought, with a little sharpness. But that was all.
Was it all? In the depths of her heart Janet felt that it was not. Mr. Meredith’s eyes were fine, with almost too much eyelash for a man; they were undeniably like those bold orbs which shine from waxen faces in a barber’s shop: but they had a way of opening very wide and expressing a great deal of sentiment, which is not given to those representations of manhood, though at first Janet was wicked enough to think that if the waxen busts could look sentimental they would do it in a similar way. When Janet, however, found that these great eyes were made for herself—when she discovered that Mr. Charles Meredith was asking pardon of her for his scant greeting, and throwing a good deal of respectful admiration into the momentary but intense gaze which was from time to time directed upon her—and when, finally, she found herself almost by this same medium taken into his confidence, made to sympathize with him when, having settled down for a comfortable chat, and secured a place near herself where he could conduct these telegraphic communications easily, he was carried off without compunction by Gussy to the piano—Janet’s opinion undeniably changed a little.
There is nothing more flattering than to be made the confidant, to be put behind the scenes, to have thedessous des cartesrevealed to you; and the piquancy of the revelation, which was never put into words, which was half her own quick perception, which could not have been made to any one whose understanding was less vivid, charmed her imagination, which was still mischievous and curious like that of a child. Sometimes, when Gussy led him away triumphant, he would give a rueful glance, and it was hard ado for Janet to restrain her impulse to laugh. Gussy swept him away in her train as if he had been her own property, as if his visit had no other object than that piano, always open in the background, which afforded such an easy mode of separation from the others, and the suggestive delightful semi-privacy in which the two voices mingled as the two hearts were learning to mingle. That was Gussy’s view of the question, but it did not long continue to be Janet’s. When poor Gussy made, as now and then she did, a false note, when she went wrong in those somewhat elaborate accompaniments which Janet knew she herself could play so much better, a momentary gleam from Mr. Meredith’s eyes,the pointed shrug of his shoulders or elevation of his brows, gave Janet once more that inclination to laugh which it was so difficult to restrain.
It did not at all occur to the girl behind backs that she was an accomplice in a piece of domestic treachery. It was ludicrous to see the unconscious performer, full of complacency in her accomplishment, producing those false notes; it was at once horrifying and laughable to hear the strange discords with which the piano came in. Janet, who could have done it so much better herself, felt a little shiver steal over her at the first jarring thrill, and what so natural as that he, who was evidently a good musician, should discover it, too, and seek her sympathy. As these communications grew more frequent, it is true that Janet did feel a little shame now and then steal over her. Poor Miss Harwood! She would not like it, the governess felt sure, if she surprised one of these glances; and thus, in the complacence of knowing better, in the secret superiority of divining the sentiments of Gussy’s lover even better than Gussy did, the girl felt it almost impossible not to burst into a little laugh again.
Were these two floating on—as Gussy thought in her confident tenderness and glamour of love, as Mrs. Harwood thought in her anxious calculations and adding up of this and that to see whether it would do, as Julia, in her eager dislike and scorn and childish inexperience, was certain of—towards a happydénouementand a life of harmony together? This was what Janet did not know. She sat and wondered, going on with her needlework. Janet, who was not at all without experience, and who had seen that people in most things consider their own advantage and pleasure first, as the protectress of her own childhood had done in adopting her, did not jump to the conclusion that Meredith had not the intentions which the others attributed to him. But she had a doubt which none of the others had. She sat and wondered, working on, anxious to be a little nearer, and hear what they were saying, longing to be asked to take that accompaniment, to be in the middle of what was going on. The uncertainty lent the scene, which in any case would have been as good as a play, a still more vivid interest. Her heart beat with the sensation of knowing so much more than the others, with wondering from day to day what would be the next event, and how it would end. Strangely enough, she did not enter at all into Gussy’s feelings, or conceive any sympathy for her. Like Julia, like the very young in general, Janet was angry with Miss Harwood for being “silly,” for letting the visitor seehis advantage. She could not forgive the woman who made the advances, who was deceived and fancied herself beloved, and flung herself at the head, or at the feet, of a tardy lover. She was more impatient with Gussy for the glamour in her eyes, than with Meredith for having none, for shrugging his shoulders at the false notes.
It came about, however, one evening, in the most natural manner in the world, that Janet, trembling with impatience behind backs, and longing to be in the midst of it, achieved at last the active share she desired in what was going on. She never could tell whether it was accident or whether Meredith had chosen on purpose a duet of which the accompaniment was extremely difficult, such as Miss Harwood was quite incapable of.
After a few trials and failures, the practising came to a sudden end, and a little controversy evidently went on over the piano. He proposed something which she did not consent to willingly. By-and-bye Gussy’s voice, a little raised in vexation, reached the other end of the room.
“I have no reason to suppose she can play at all,” she said.
Then there was a murmur from Meredith and the name of Julia.
“Oh, yes! enough to teach Ju; but Ju has no ear and no taste, and never will do anything.”
Again the lover made a representation, inaudible, in Gussy’s ear.
“Well, if you like we can ask her; but it’s always introducing a third, and spoiling——”
Janet’s ears were so quickened by this time that she heard, or thought she heard, him say, stooping close to Gussy’s ear,
“Who can feel that like me? But she’s only—seems to know her place.”
Heavens! how the heart jumped up in Janet’s breast! She was sure she heard him say, “seems to know her place.” Her place! and he who had made her his confidant, made her the judge, making fun of Gussy to her, as he now set her down so contemptuously to Gussy! The blood boiled in Janet’s veins, a flood of thoughts and resolutions rushed through her mind. She would not play for them! They might break down, and Miss Harwood might jar him to death with her discords, for anything Janet cared. Her place! behind their backs, without notice, without a word! Oh, yes, she would keep it, she would understand what it was, she would do nothing for them! And then the pendulum swung the other way. Yes, she would play for them. She would show Gussy what abungler she was. She would let them both see that it was quite simple, nothing to make any fuss about, to herself no more than the easiest exercise! She would play, but never betray again that she was conscious of Mr. Meredith’s existence, never seem to see his looks, treat him as if he were the cabbage——
All this ran through her thoughts in the moment, while Miss Harwood turned slowly round on her music stool, and he advanced a step, turning towards Janet a look of entreaty, and at the same time of private intelligence, such as all her resolution not to look could not prevent her from seeing. Gussy had never treated Janet with unkindness, never shown any want of consideration, save in ignoring her on these occasions; but at present her voice sounded careless, disrespectful, almost insulting.
“Miss Summerhayes!” she called out, carelessly.
Janet, with still that tumult in her breast, did not lift her eyes or move in her seat.
“Miss Summerhayes!” cried Gussy again.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Harwood, “my daughter is calling you. I think you did not hear.”
“Oh!” said Janet, and looked up as if she had heard for the first time; indeed, the force of her indignation gave her something of the feeling of one awakened from a dream.
“Will you come here, please?” said Miss Harwood.
Never before had there been between them the tone of command and obedience. Janet reflected to herself bitterly that she was supposed to know her place, and rose, but with a reluctance that anybody could see.
This reluctance softened Gussy. She thought the other girl felt all the inappropriateness of being made the third between two——
“Please come and look at this accompaniment. I have never seen it before, and it seems difficult. Will you try it for us? You said you could play.”
“Yes, I can play.” Janet went slowly towards the piano. He might make eyes as he chose, she would not see them. She looked at the music while Gussy rose and left the place for her. Easy? why, it was child’s play! “I will play it if you wish me to do so;” her fingers were crisp with impatience to get at the keys.
“Oh, do, do, Miss Summerhayes! we are waiting for you. A new accompaniment and a new song at once are too much for anyone. Is that the proper height for you? is the lightas you like it? Ah!” he said, with a deep breath, “that is something like; now, Gussy!”
He took her hand to draw her to his side, and over Gussy’s colorless face there sprang anew that light as if it came through rose-leaves, through some ethereal medium, a light ineffable, which neither sunlight nor lamplight ever gave.
Poor Gussy! this was the look which made her sister’s childish countenance lower, which was “silly,” which moved Janet to mingled ridicule, wrath, and shame. These young critics had no mercy. But as she stood by her lover’s side and sang, all unkindly thoughts and every little irritation went out of Gussy’s soul. She was the only one of them whose mind was in true harmony with the music; the others were better performers. She forgot that she had been displeased to have Janet called in. She touched the girl’s shoulder tenderly, gratefully with her hand; her heart went out in the song, though she was not so very certain about the notes.
It was not at all with these beautiful emotions that Janet plunged into the mazes of the notes. She played with rage, with fury, beating down the man who had wounded her, helping out the tremulous soprano; and Meredith, roused to the conflict, sang against her, till he, too, excelled himself. It was like a musical duel, carried out to the last note with an intention which the two chief performers only were aware of; and Janet was ringing out the last symphony with her cheeks burning and her heart beating, when suddenly she sprang up from the piano and covered her face and her ears with her hands.
“Oh, there it is!” she cried, “there it is again!”
“There is—what?” said Miss Harwood. She had been standing a step apart, contemplating with mixed feelings the performance from which she herself had dropped. She came forward and laid her hand on Janet’s shoulder. “What is the matter, Miss Summerhayes? Have you done too much? are you ill? What is it?”
“The voice, the voice!” said Janet, still with her hands on her ears.
“The voice! I heard the wind in the chimney, if that is what you mean.”
“And I heard nothing at all, except Miss Summerhayes’ brilliant performance,” said Mr. Meredith.
“Miss Summerhayes is not so complimentary to you. She evidently was not thinking of your brilliant performance. Why, you are quite upset,” said Gussy with the faintest tone of contempt.
“What is it? What did she hear?” cried Mrs. Harwood, sharply, from her chair.
Thislittle incident could not be said to have much effect upon Janet’s relations with the family in which she was living, but yet it was not without some influence on the new order of things. She had an interview next morning with Mrs. Harwood, who complimented her very much on the beneficial influence she was exercising over Julia.
“I begin to hope that, after all, she will become a reasonable creature, and like other people,” said the mother. “I need not tell you that she has been a great trouble to me, and nobody we have had has ever got such command of her before. She is growing very fond of you, Miss Summerhayes, and I hope nothing will occur to disturb this good understanding,” she continued, with a little significance in her tone. Then, after a pause, she resumed, as with an afterthought, “Oh! there is just one thing I wanted to speak to you about. I am afraid, my dear, from what happened last night, that you are a little fanciful, easily-frightened, terrified, they tell me,” she said, with a little laugh, “for ghosts, and that sort of nonsense.”
“No—oh, no! indeed, indeed I never was.”
“Then, my dear,” said Mrs. Harwood, laying her hand, not unkindly, on Janet’s arm, “don’t begin now. They told me you heard something that frightened you. Be quite sure that there’s always a perfectly natural explanation of anything you may hear. There is nothing whatever in this house to be frightened about. Make yourself quite sure on that point, and we shall always get on perfectly well, I am convinced. Now run away, you and her. I won’t keep you longer. I am sure it is time for your walk.”
“But, Mrs. Harwood——” said Janet, with some timidity.
“No,” said the old lady, “I won’t keep you any longer. You must not lose the sunshiny part of the day.”
Janet lingered a moment longer, but her courage failed her. How could she insist upon a thing which nobody paid any attention to but herself? Perhaps, indeed, nobody but herself heard it at all. It might be something which was addressed to herself alone; some mysterious warning; something which could not find any other utterance. The little governess, however, was so sensible and so perfectly modern in her viewsthat, though such a flattering and thrilling idea did occur to her, she did not entertain the notion. Why should she have a ghostly voice all to herself? What could there be that she required to be warned about in such a way? Janet knew very little of her family, but they were not distinguished enough to possess a ghost. She did not believe that it was a ghost at all; it was something in trouble, something that had been caught in a trap, or perhaps the cry of some one who was mad, which was a very terrible suggestion. To see a ghost would be exciting indeed, though even the youthful imagination of the nineteenth century has overcome these kind of terrors—and there would be a distinction in the vision of something supernatural which would more than make up for the strain upon the nerves; but to encounter a madman about the house or garden would be very different, a horror which would have no compensating superiority. How could she ask, however, of that calm old lady in her chair whether she was quite sure there was no dangerous madman about? Such a suggestion might bring on something terrible; it might produce a fit, or something; it might kill Mrs. Harwood. Janet made up her mind it was better to forbear, to wait a little longer, to see what might happen. And she had not been insensible to the significance of Mrs. Harwood’s tone when she hoped that nothing would occur to disturb their good understanding. Janet was very quick-witted, and the tone was not lost upon her. It brought before her very distinctly the fact that Mrs. Harwood, if she pleased, could send her away, and that it would not be pleasant to be sent away. To go of her own accord might be supportable, though she did not by any means desire it: but to be sent away would not do at all. She knew what all the gossips at Clover would say. They would say they knew from the beginning that Janet Summerhayes never would do in a situation; that she had been too much spoiled ever to get on in a place where she had to consider other people and not herself, and that they were quite convinced she would soon turn up to be a burden on the good Blands, who were foolishly kind to her. Rather any self-denial, Janet said to herself, than encounter this? So she restrained her alarms, kept a careful eye upon all the dark corners when she went up or downstairs, always carried a light with her wherever she went, and determined to say nothing, whatever might happen, so long as she could bear it. In this way she kept herself calm, although she could not divest herself of an alarmed expectation and sense that at any moment she might be startled into overpowering terror again.
Another consequence, however, followed, which she did not become aware of at once, yet which was of more practical importance—and that was that her presence in the drawing-room in the long evenings was not so much a matter of course as it had been. The little dinner-parties, at which the guests consisted only of Mr. Charles Meredith and one other man, or sometimes of Mr. Charles Meredith (as she discovered) alone, took place more frequently, and it was occasionally discovered by Miss Harwood or her mother that Julia ought to prepare her lessons better in the evening, which meant, of course, the exclusion of Miss Summerhayes too. When Janet saw that this had become a system she was, of course, disturbed by it; but she was so reasonable that she did not take offence, as some young women might do. She concluded, on the whole, after the first prick of annoyance, that it was quite a natural thing, and one that she had no right to complain of. Miss Harwood liked to have her suitor (if he was her suitor) to herself. She did not want a third person coming in between them, especially a third person who, in one particular at least, surpassed herself. Janet acknowledged that it was quite natural. In such circumstances she too, she felt, would invent reasons why the other girl should not come downstairs, why she should not be allowed to interfere. It was a pity, and she did not like it. It was dull with Julia in the school-room, and not to be able to note how the play was going was a disappointment. But she behaved herself like a little heroine, and did not complain. It certainly did not occur to her, at this period of her history, that to be prevented from improving her acquaintance with Charles Meredith was a grievance of which, even to herself, she could complain.
It happened to her, however, during this period, when again she had volunteered to match crewels for Mrs. Harwood, on a day when nobody else was going out, to meet Meredith exactly as she had done when she saw him first. She had run into the little shop on her mission—the St. John’s Wood shop, with all its little merchandises, like a superior village repository: and there, once more, exactly in the same spot, looking over the music, was the now well-known figure, correct yet easy in his morning suit, with his black hair and dark eyes and waxen bloom. The old ladies in the shop thought Mr. Meredith a model of manly beauty, and even Janet could not refrain from an involuntary glance of satisfaction. She was half-ashamed this time of having thought that he was like a barber’s block. And his eyes lighted up with such evidentpleasure at the sight of her that it would have been impossible for a little girl long abstracted from any look of admiration not to be pleased.
“Come and help me to choose a new song for to-night,” he said, after a warm greeting. “I have not seen you for a fortnight, Miss Summerhayes. I hope we shall meet to-night.”
“Not if you are coming to dinner,” said Janet, demurely; “we do not come down to dinner when there is company, Julia and I.”
“Oh, that is the explanation?” said Meredith, and, with a widening of his eyes and elevation of his eyebrows, he added, “Then I shall not come to dinner to-night.”
Janet said nothing, for what had she to say? She had no part in these arrangements of her superiors. She gave a glance at the song he held in his hand.
“It would be better to practise those you have than to bring anything new.”
“Ah, if you could persuade her of that! and if we singers could be left free to think of the song without hammering at the accompaniment! How well you play, Miss Summerhayes.”
“I can do nothing else,” said Janet; “I was taught only for that.”
“Yes,” said Meredith, “that is the right way—to do one thing well, and stick to it; but, unfortunately, everybody is not of that opinion. Most ladies think that they can do anything—or, at least, try.”
“No more than most men,” said Janet, quickly.
“Oh, don’t you think so? I think you’ll allow we’ve a different way of setting to work. We do what we can, what we have studied; but you ladies try a little of everything without having studied at all. Miss Harwood has a nice little voice, but no science even in that, and she knows no more of the piano than of the steam-engine. Don’t contradict me, Miss Summerhayes, for I am sure I must know best. I have suffered from it too much.”
“You have no appearance of suffering at all,” said Janet.
“Ah, that’s all my power of dissembling,” he said.
Janet had got her crewels by this time, and she had a vague consciousness that it would be well not to continue this conversation, so she said, “Good-morning!” and was about to pass him on her way home when he put out his hand to detain her.
“Miss Summerhayes, don’t run away. I am going in the same direction. We are prevented from making friendsin the evening, but I should not like to let an opportunity slip.”
“Who keeps us from making friends, Mr. Meredith? You are making a great mistake.”
“Am I? If you think you know Gussy Harwood, it is you that are quite mistaken, Miss Summerhayes. How quickly you walk; I can scarcely keep up with you.” He laughed, and took a stride or two which made Janet’s attempt to hurry away ridiculous. “There is no harm in walking along the same pavement, even with a person you disapprove of.”
“I don’t disapprove of—any one,” said Janet.
“Oh, that is more than I bargained for. You must promise to play for me to-night.”
“But you said you were not coming to-night,” said Janet.
“So I did,” he answered, laughing; “but never mind—not to dinner, certainly. You must promise me to play, and not to stop short all at once, as you did the other night, whatever you may hear.”
“Oh, did you hear it too?” Janet cried, clasping her hands.
“I don’t think I heard anything. There are queer sounds sometimes about that Harwood house—and old Vicars is queer; don’t you think so? Never mind, Miss Summerhayes, you and I have nothing to do with that.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” said Janet. “I have nothing at all to do with it; but you, who are a great friend of the family, and have known them so long, you ought not to talk like that.”
“What am I saying?” said Meredith; “that you and I have nothing to do with the secrets of the family, if they have any. Isn’t that quite true?”
“We are not at all in the same position,” said Janet, indignantly. “I am a stranger and the governess. You are their—dear friend.”
Mr. Meredith laughed low, with vanity and self-complacence.
“Am I a ‘dear friend’?—you flatter me very much, Miss Summerhayes—of Julia, for instance, who says the prettiest things about me. I see you’ve been working in my favor, for she’s no longer so uncivil as she used to be.”
“Oh, Mr. Meredith, she means no harm; she’s only so—so——”
“Sincere,” he said; “so she is, and I am half sorry you have taught her to mend her ways: for she is less amusing when she behaves like other people. The brother, too—but you’ve not yet made acquaintance with the charming Dolff—I knowwhat will happen to that young man before he has been two days in the house.”
“What?” cried Janet.
She felt more than ever that the conversation was undesirable; but she was full of curiosity, and her companion had ways and modes of securing the feminine attention. He made great play with those eyes of his, which expressed so much more than his words. Even now he answered her question with them in a way which made Janet blush before he had said a word.
“What will happen to him? Oh, I know; but I will not forestall the pleasure of the discovery. I suppose it’s always more or less a pleasure to a young lady when she finds—— Oh, I am not going to say any more. You need not blush, Miss Summerhayes.”
“I am not blushing,” cried Janet, angrily, feeling her countenance blaze.
“Oh, no, I see; it is only the effect of walking so quickly, which brings the most agreeable color to the cheek. About Mr. Dolff, we shall see what we shall see. But keep your head, whatever you do, Miss Summerhayes, and we shall have some fun. It will be as good as a play.”
“You are as good as a play,” cried Janet, indignant, eager to give him a prick in return.
“Who, I?” He gave her a momentary stare, then laughed. “We,” he said; “I don’t pretend not to understand. I daresay we give you a good deal of amusement as you sit and make your remarks. I saw the very first night what a keen pair of eyes had come into the scene. But do not be too sure of anything. People who look on don’t always see the whole of the game.”
“I think I see a great deal of the game; and I don’t like it at all,” Janet cried.
“You don’t like me at all, Miss Summerhayes. After that home-thrust I have nothing for it but to make my bow and take my leave.”