Mrs. Barrington and her eldest daughter had just come in.  “Oh, so Miss Leigh has arrived!” cried the former, observing Bluebell’s box in the hall.  “Dear me, what a bore new people are!  I really must rest, as we dine out.  Couldn’t you go up, Kate, and say I hope she is comfortable, and will ring for the school-room maid whenever she wants anything, and all that?”

“That would console her immensely, I should think,” said Miss Barrington, laughing.  “Well, I will go and look her over, mamma, and report the result.”

As Kate entered, her little set speech, that “mamma was lying down, but hoped,” etc., was almost suspended on her lips, as she gazed with unfeigned curiosity at the new governess.  Seated pensively behind the urn was a fair girl, dressed in black, with an Elizabethan ruff round a long white throat.  Shining chestnut hair contrasted with a complexion of the purest pink and white, while a pair of dewy violet eyes looked shyly up at her.  “Good heavens!” thought Kate, “she is the loveliest creature in Brighton at this moment.”

“I have also come to ask for a cup of tea.  No, thank you, Adela, none of that!  What buttered bricks!  Goodness, children! don’t you ever have cake, or jam, or anything?”

“Miss Steele used to say it would give us muddy complexions, and spoil our digestion.”

“Poor little victims!  Never mind, you’ll come out some day.  I must make haste and get married, Mabel, if you grow like that.  But Miss Leigh must be starved.  Do you like eggs and bacon?” with her hand on the bell.

“Very much,” said Bluebell, smiling back, more in gratitude for the good intentions than anything else.

“Poor thing!” cried Kate, impulsively, quite vanquished by the smile; “you will be so dull when the children go to bed.  I wish we were not going out to-night.  I’ll collect the newspapers, and send you up a capital novel I got yesterday from the library.”

Bluebell was cheered in a moment.  “I am sure it was you whom I have to thank too, for those violets,” said she, touching a few transferred to her waist-belt, and beaming up at her new acquaintance.

Kate nodded pleasantly.  “Do you like flowers?  I bought them in the King’s Road this morning.”  A few minutes later she burst into her mother’s room.

“Where does this rara avis hail from?  I never clapped eyes on such a beauty—­Miss Seraphin is not a patch on her!”

“Don’t be so noisy, dear—­Miss Leigh?  Yes I heard she was nice-looking.”

“Nice-looking!” echoed Kate, contemptuously.  “Just wait till you see her.  She will be focused by every eye-glass in Brighton when she takes the children out for their constitutional.”

“Dear me!  I hope she is a proper kind of person.”

“She looks rather in the Lady Audley style—­and such a complexion!  I could have sworn it was painted if it had not varied so.  Now I think of it,” said Kate, with malice prepense, “she is not at all unlike the photographs, of—­,”—­naming some one of whose existence she had no business to have been aware.