“I know it was very weak,” she said; “but it was the only way to stop his mouth, and I must have time to talk to you, so don’t begin your mission by scolding me.”

Terms were settled; Mary would remain at the schoolhouse, but daily come to the Pagoda till the removal to London, when her residence was to begin in earnest.

She took up her line from the first as governess, dropping her friend’s Christian name, and causing her pupils to address herself as Miss Ogilvie, a formality which was evidently approved by Mrs. Robert Brownlow, and likewise by Janet.

That young lady was wonderfully improved by prosperity.  She had lost her caustic manner and air of defiance, so that her cleverness and originality made her amusing instead of disagreeable.  She piqued herself on taking her good fortune sensibly, and, though fully seventeen, professed not to know or care whether she was out or not, but threw herself into hard study, with a view to her classes, and gladly availed herself of Miss Ogilvie’s knowledge of foreign languages.

Mrs. Coffinkey supposed that she would be presented at court with her dear mamma; but she laughed at courts and ceremonies, and her mother said that the first presentation in the family would be of Allen’s wife when he was a member of parliament.  But Janet was no longer at war with Kenminster.  She laughed good-humouredly, and was not always struggling for self-assertion, since the humiliations of going about as the poor, plain cousin of the pretty Miss Brownlow were over.  Now that she was the rich Miss Brownlow, she was not likely to feel that she was the plain one.

The sense of exile was over when the house in London was taken, and so Janet could afford to be kind to Kenminster; and she was like the Janet of old times, without her slough of captious disdain.  Even then there was a sense that the girl was not fathomed; she never seemed to pour out her inner self, but only to talk from the surface, and certainly not to have any full confidence with her mother—-nay, rather to hold her cheap.

Mary Ogilvie detected this disloyal spirit, and was at a loss whether to ascribe it to modern hatred of control, to the fact that Caroline had been in her old home more like the favourite child than the mother, or to her own eager naturalness of demeanour, and total lack of assumption.  She was anything but weak, yet she could not be dignified, and was quite ready to laugh at herself with her children.  Janet could hardly be overawed by a mother who had been challenged by her own gamekeeper creeping down a ditch, with the two Johns, to see a wild duck on her nest, and with her hat half off, and her hair disordered by the bushes.

The “Folly” laughed till its sides ached at the adventure, and Caroline asked Mary if she were not longing to scold her.

“No, I think you will soon grow more cautious about getting into ridiculous positions.”