“But your father would not have her sent, you know, Eliza,” spoke Mrs. Carradyne.

“Then—­”

“Miss West, ma’am,” interrupted Rimmer, the butler, showing in the traveller.

“Dear me, how very young!” was Mrs. Carradyne’s first thought.  “And what a lovely face!”

She came in shyly.  In her whole appearance there was a shrinking, timid gentleness, betokening refinement of feeling.  A slender, lady-like girl, in a plain, dark travelling suit and a black bonnet lined and tied with pink, a little lace border shading her nut-brown hair.  The bonnets in those days set off a pretty face better than do these modern ones.  That’s what the Squire tells us.

Mrs. Carradyne advanced and shook hands cordially; Eliza bent her head slightly from where she stood; Harry Carradyne stood up, a pleasant welcome in his blue eyes and in his voice, as he laughingly congratulated her upon the ancient Evesham fly not having come to grief en route.  Kate Dancox pressed forward.

“Are you my new governess?”

The young lady smiled and said she believed so.

“Aunt Eliza hates governesses; so do I. Do you expect to make me obey you?”

The governess blushed painfully; but took courage to say she hoped she should.  Harry Carradyne thought it the very loveliest blush he had ever seen in all his travels, and she the sweetest-looking girl.

And when Captain Monk came in he quite took to her appearance, for he hated to have ugly people about him.  But every now and then there was a look in her face, or in her eyes, that struck him as being familiar—­as if he had once known someone who resembled her.  Pleasing, soft dark hazel eyes they were as one could wish to see, with goodness in their depths.

III.

Months passed away, and Miss West was domesticated in her new home.  It was not all sunshine.  Mrs. Carradyne, ever considerate, strove to render things agreeable; but there were sources of annoyance over which she had no control.  Kate, when she chose, could be verily a little elf, a demon; as Mrs. Hamlyn often put it, “a diablesse.”  And she, that lady herself, invariably treated the governess with a sort of cool, indifferent contempt; and she was more often at Leet Hall than away from it.  The Captain, too, gave way to fits of temper that simply terrified Miss West.  Reared in the quiet atmosphere of a well-trained school, she had never met with temper such as this.

On the other hand—­yes, on the other hand, she had an easy place of it, generous living, was regarded as a lady, and—­she had learnt to love Harry Carradyne for weal or for woe.

But not—­please take notice—­not unsolicited.  Tacitly, at any rate.  If Mr. Harry’s speaking blue eyes were to be trusted and Mr. Harry’s tell-tale tones when with her, his love, at the very least, equalled hers.  Eliza Hamlyn, despite the penetration that ill-nature generally can exercise, had not yet scented any such treason in the wind:  or there would have blown up a storm.