‘You will be thinking,’ she said, ‘that I am a mere amateur.’

’If I do, I shall be an ungrateful wretch—­and an insensible one, to boot.’

She rode down the hill without replying.

CHAPTER III

LYRICAL

Miss Hood did not, of course, dine with the family.  Though, as Mrs. Rossall said, it was a distinct advantage to have in the house a governess whom one could in many respects treat as an equal, yet there was naturally a limit, in this as in all other matters.  We have not yet, either in fact or in sentiment, quite outgrown the social stage in which personal hiring sets on the hired a stigma of servitude.  Mrs. Rossall was not unaware that, in all that concerned intellectual refinement, her governess was considerably superior to herself, and in personal refinement not less a lady; but the fact of quarterly payments, spite of all this, inevitably indicated a place below the salt.  Mr. Athel, though, as we have seen, anxious to indulge himself in humane regard whenever social regulations permitted, was the last man to suffer in his household serious innovations upon traditional propriety.

So Miss Hood—­Emily, as she was called by the little group of people away in Yorkshire, to whom she was other than a governess; Emily; as we will permit ourselves to call her henceforth—­always had the meal of tea with the children.  After that the evening was her own, save that the twins kept her company until their hour of bedtime.  The school-room was also her sitting-room.  After half-past eight in the evening she had it to herself, and there she passed many an hour of quiet content, playing softly on the piano, reading, dreaming.  In the matter of books she was well off; Mr. Athel and his sister had subscriptions at several London libraries, and of these the governess was invited to make free use.  It was some restraint upon her that her choice of reading always passed under Mrs. Bossall’s eyes, but not so much after the first few weeks.  The widow was by this time well advanced in the resumption of purely mundane literature, and the really liberal tone which prevailed in the house removed apprehension in the pursuit of modern studies.  For it was rather an ideal towards which she was working than an attainment in fact, that eclecticism of which she spoke to Wilfrid Athel.  The monthly library lists which came under her eyes offered many a sore temptation.  She was true on the whole to her system; she did not read at random, and never read frivolously; but a taste strongly directed to the best in literature will find much in the work of our day, especially its criticism, which is indispensable as guidance, or attractive by its savour.  This was not Emily’s first access, fortunately, to the streams of contemporary thought; already she had enjoyed and largely used opportunities of the most various reading.  She was able now to choose with discretion, and in a great degree to make her study serve directly the scheme of culture which she had devised for herself.