“Not with you I wouldn’t be, madam,” I said, and the words surprised me when I’d spoken them, for I’m not an impulsive person; but it was just as if I’d thought aloud.

She seemed pleased at that, and said she hoped I’d continue in the same mind; then she gave me a few directions about her toilet, and said Agnes the house-maid would show me next morning where things were kept.

“I am tired to-night, and shall dine upstairs,” she said.  “Agnes will bring me my tray, that you may have time to unpack and settle yourself; and later you may come and undress me.”

“Very well, ma’am,” I said.  “You’ll ring, I suppose?”

I thought she looked odd.

“No—­Agnes will fetch you,” says she quickly, and took up her book again.

Well—­that was certainly strange:  a lady’s maid having to be fetched by the house-maid whenever her lady wanted her!  I wondered if there were no bells in the house; but the next day I satisfied myself that there was one in every room, and a special one ringing from my mistress’s room to mine; and after that it did strike me as queer that, whenever Mrs. Brympton wanted anything, she rang for Agnes, who had to walk the whole length of the servants’ wing to call me.

But that wasn’t the only queer thing in the house.  The very next day I found out that Mrs. Brympton had no nurse; and then I asked Agnes about the woman I had seen in the passage the afternoon before.  Agnes said she had seen no one, and I saw that she thought I was dreaming.  To be sure, it was dusk when we went down the passage, and she had excused herself for not bringing a light; but I had seen the woman plain enough to know her again if we should meet.  I decided that she must have been a friend of the cook’s, or of one of the other women-servants:  perhaps she had come down from town for a night’s visit, and the servants wanted it kept secret.  Some ladies are very stiff about having their servants’ friends in the house overnight.  At any rate, I made up my mind to ask no more questions.

In a day or two, another odd thing happened.  I was chatting one afternoon with Mrs. Blinder, who was a friendly disposed woman, and had been longer in the house than the other servants, and she asked me if I was quite comfortable and had everything I needed.  I said I had no fault to find with my place or with my mistress, but I thought it odd that in so large a house there was no sewing-room for the lady’s maid.

“Why,” says she, “there is one; the room you’re in is the old sewing-room.”

“Oh,” said I; “and where did the other lady’s maid sleep?”

At that she grew confused, and said hurriedly that the servants’ rooms had all been changed about last year, and she didn’t rightly remember.

That struck me as peculiar, but I went on as if I hadn’t noticed:  “Well, there’s a vacant room opposite mine, and I mean to ask Mrs. Brympton if I mayn’t use that as a sewing-room.”