“It really is too bad of Mrs. Markham not having mentioned this,” cried Mrs. Barrington, as if Bluebell had been convicted of a crime.  “It is most unpleasant having so voyante a person about the children!”

“Oh, what does it matter,” said Kate, heedlessly; “you have no grown up sons.  And she seems awfully nice.  She has a face with a history in it, though.  I shall try and make her out to-morrow.  No one is ever so innocent as she looks.”

Kate’s admiration was still further excited next day as she listened to Bluebell’s singing.

“You never heard anything like it, mamma—­she could fill Covent Garden; and she composes too.  I wonder if she has ever been on the stage?”

Less appreciative was the judgment of the erudite Mabel, who reported Miss Leigh unable to continue her arithmetic beyond the decimal fractions she had attained to with Miss Steele.  “In fact,” said the child, with deep contempt, “I don’t believe she has ever-gone beyond the rule of three herself.”

Indeed, the exact sciences were not Bluebell’s specialite, who now employed many a perplexed hour trying with Sievier’s Arithmetic to work herself up a little ahead of this precocious pupil.  Fortunately she was tolerably strong in history, having gone through a regular course with the little Markhams; but it was evident, notwithstanding, that Mabel and Adela pretty accurately gauged her acquirements, and held them proportionably cheap.

Kate, too, had become somewhat of a tease.  I don’t know what led her to suspect that the governess had something to conceal, but she was perpetually putting questions most difficult for her to answer; the incitement being the pleasure of watching, from an artistic point of view, the beauty of Bluebell’s ever-ready blushes while essaying to parry her tormentor’s inquisitorial efforts.

This cat-and-mouse game would go on till the victim, turning to bay, was on the point of desperately asking, “What she wished to find out?” Then Kate would veil her eyes, and look all innocent indifference.  Observing the avidity with which she pounced on newspapers, Miss Barrington one day secreted them, much entertained by watching the governess circling round the room, glancing on every table or couch they were likely to have been thrown on.

“Try behind the sofa cushion, Miss Leigh.”

Bluebell started, vexed at being observed, and also at this proof of espionnage on her actions, but a little later she fell into more serious self betrayal.  They were trying over songs in a locked manuscript book.

“Dear me, what is this air?  I know it so well,” she cried, incautiously humming it.

“A sea song of my cousin, Harry Dutton’s.  I had no idea any one else possessed a copy.”

There was no answer.  She looked up, the blood had rushed over Bluebell’s cheek and brow, her lips were apart, and eyes wide open and bright with wonder.  Before she could drop a mask over the too eloquent face, Kate’s keen eyes were reading her off.