‘You’ll excuse me, Mrs. Graye,’ she said, ’but ’tis the old gentleman’s birthday, and they always have a lot of people to dinner on that day, though he’s getting up in years now.  However, none of them are sleepers—­she generally keeps the house pretty clear of lodgers (being a lady with no intimate friends, though many acquaintances), which, though it gives us less to do, makes it all the duller for the younger maids in the house.’  Mrs. Morris then proceeded to give in fragmentary speeches an outline of the constitution and government of the estate.

’Now, are you sure you have quite done tea?  Not a bit or drop more?  Why, you’ve eaten nothing, I’m sure. . . .  Well, now, it is rather inconvenient that the other maid is not here to show you the ways of the house a little, but she left last Saturday, and Miss Aldclyffe has been making shift with poor old clumsy me for a maid all yesterday and this morning.  She is not come in yet.  I expect she will ask for you, Mrs. Graye, the first thing. . . .  I was going to say that if you have really done tea, I will take you upstairs, and show you through the wardrobes—­Miss Aldclyffe’s things are not laid out for to-night yet.’

She preceded Cytherea upstairs, pointed out her own room, and then took her into Miss Aldclyffe’s dressing-room, on the first-floor; where, after explaining the whereabouts of various articles of apparel, the housekeeper left her, telling her that she had an hour yet upon her hands before dressing-time.  Cytherea laid out upon the bed in the next room all that she had been told would be required that evening, and then went again to the little room which had been appropriated to herself.

Here she sat down by the open window, leant out upon the sill like another Blessed Damozel, and listlessly looked down upon the brilliant pattern of colours formed by the flower-beds on the lawn —­now richly crowded with late summer blossom.  But the vivacity of spirit which had hitherto enlivened her, was fast ebbing under the pressure of prosaic realities, and the warm scarlet of the geraniums, glowing most conspicuously, and mingling with the vivid cold red and green of the verbenas, the rich depth of the dahlia, and the ripe mellowness of the calceolaria, backed by the pale hue of a flock of meek sheep feeding in the open park, close to the other side of the fence, were, to a great extent, lost upon her eyes.  She was thinking that nothing seemed worth while; that it was possible she might die in a workhouse; and what did it matter?  The petty, vulgar details of servitude that she had just passed through, her dependence upon the whims of a strange woman, the necessity of quenching all individuality of character in herself, and relinquishing her own peculiar tastes to help on the wheel of this alien establishment, made her sick and sad, and she almost longed to pursue some free, out-of-doors employment, sleep under trees or a hut, and know no enemy but winter and cold weather, like shepherds and cowkeepers, and birds and animals—­ay, like the sheep she saw there under her window.  She looked sympathizingly at them for several minutes, imagining their enjoyment of the rich grass.