“Well, there may be no harm in my writing to the lady about you,” decided Mrs. Moffit, won over by the girl’s gentle respect—­with which she did not get treated by all her clients.  “Suppose you come here again on Monday next?”

The end of the matter was that Miss West was engaged by the lady mentioned—­no other than Mrs. Carradyne.  And she journeyed down into Worcestershire to enter upon the situation.

But clever (and generally correct) Mrs. Moffit made one mistake, arising, no doubt, from the chronic state of hurry she was always in.  “Miss West is the daughter of the late Colonel William West,” she wrote, “who went to India with his regiment a few years ago, and died there.”  What Miss West had said to her was this:  “My father, a clergyman, died when I was a little child, and my uncle William, Colonel West, the only relation I had left, died three years ago in India.”  Mrs. Moffit somehow confounded the two.

This might not have mattered on the whole.  But, as you perceive, it conveyed a wrong impression at Leet Hall.

“The governess I have engaged is a Miss West; her father was a military man and a gentleman,” spake Mrs. Carradyne one morning at breakfast to Captain Monk.  “She is rather young—­about twenty, I fancy; but an older person might never get on at all with Kate.”

“Had good references with her, I suppose?” said the Captain.

“Oh, yes.  From the agent, and especially from the ladies who have brought her up.”

“Who was her father, do you say?—­a military man?”

“Colonel William West,” assented Mrs. Carradyne, referring to the letter she held.  “He went to India with his regiment and died there.”

“I’ll refer to the army-list,” said the Captain; “daresay it’s all right.  And she shall keep Kate in order, or I’ll know the reason why.”

* * * * *

The evening sunlight lay on the green plain, on the white fields from which the grain had been reaped, and on the beautiful woods glowing with the varied tints of autumn.  A fly was making its way to Leet Hall, and its occupant, looking out of it on this side and that, in a fever of ecstasy, for the country scene charmed her, thought how favoured was the lot of those who could live out their lives amidst its surroundings.

In the drawing-room at the Hall, watching the approach of this same fly, stood Mrs. Hamlyn, a frown upon her haughty face.  Philip Hamlyn was still detained in the West Indies, and since her reconciliation to her father, she would go over with her baby-boy to the Hall and remain there for days together.  Captain Monk liked to have her, and he took more notice of the baby than he had ever taken of baby yet.  For when Kate was an infant he had at first shunned her, because she had cost Katherine her life.  This baby, little Walter, was a particularly forward child, strong and upright, walked at ten months old, and much resembled his mother in feature.  In temper also.  The young one would stand sturdily in his little blue shoes and defy his grandpapa already, and assert his own will, to the amused admiration of Captain Monk.