My father’s lonely breakfasts had often been a cause of great distress to him.  He was essentially so gay and cheery; he loved the sound of voices and laughter; he liked to be amused; to discuss the plans for the day; to comment upon the letters received.  To breakfast alone, or sit alone, was for him a torture; he sighed always when the breakfast bell rang, and we knew that it was a torture in its way.  When my mother found it out she insisted upon my joining him every morning.  I was but a child, and could not interest him very much.

Now the matter was quite different.  There was Miss Reinhart, fresh and beautiful as the morning, witty and graceful, ready to ply him with flatteries, making tea for him with her own white hands, talking in the very brightest and most animated style.  She had brilliant powers of conversation, and no one could be more amusing.  Although I hated her, I often found myself hanging on the words that fell from her lips.

No wonder that the breakfast hour was prolonged, and that, often after the urn had grown cold, my father would cry out that he wanted more tea.  Miss Reinhart arranged his papers for him; she laid them ready to his hand; they discussed the politics and the principal events of the day.

Young as I was, I was struck with her animation and verve.  She spoke with such vivacity; her splendid face lighted with earnest, graceful enthusiasm.  She held very original and clever ideas about everything, and it often happened that the conversation was prolonged until my father would take out his watch and exclaim with wonder at the time.  Then Miss Reinhart would blush, and, taking me by the hand, disappear.  More than once my father followed us, and, taking my hand, would say: 

“Let us have a walk on the terrace before the lessons begin, Laura—­Miss Reinhart will come with us.”

But it was not to me he talked.

In the early days of her arrival I heard my dear mother once, when my father was speaking of her fine manners, say: 

“We ought to be proud to have so grand a lady for governess.”

Poor mamma, who knows the price she paid for a lady governess?

It was when these morning visits grew so long that I first began to notice the tone in which Miss Reinhart spoke of my mother.

She would lean her beautiful head just a little forward, her eyes bright with sweetest sympathy, her voice as beautifully sweet as the cooing of the ring-dove.

“How is dear Lady Tayne this morning, Sir Roland?” she would ask.

“I am afraid there is little difference and no improvement,” was his reply.

“Ah, how sad—­what a sad fate—­so young and so afflicted.  It must be dreadful for you, Sir Roland.  I sympathize so much with you.  I never quite lose sight of your troubles.  I do not know that there could possibly be a greater one.”

At first my father would laugh, and say gently: