‘Oh, Victoria!  Was that what you heard?’

’Miss Elbury heard it from the governess she was under.  Surely she was the only one not permitted to go up for the examination and removed.’

’True, but that was our doing—–­no decree of the High School.  Her own governess is free now, and her mother on her way, and we thought she had better not begin another term.  Yes, Victoria, I quite see that you might doubt her fitness to be much with Phyllis.  I am not asking for that—–­I shall try to get her own governess to come at once; but for the child’s sake and her mother’s I should like to get this cleared up.  May I see Miss Elbury?’

’Certainly; but I do not think you will find that she has exaggerated, though of course her informant may have done so.

Miss Elbury was of the older generation of governesses, motherly, kind, but rather prim and precise, the accomplished element being supplied with diplomaed foreigners, who, since Lady Phyllis’s failure in health, had been dispensed with.  She was a good and sensible woman, as Jane could see, in spite of the annoyance her report had occasioned, and it was impossible not to assent when she said she had felt obliged, under the circumstances, to mention to Lady Rotherwood what her cousin had told her.

‘About both my nieces,’ said Jane.  ’Yes, I quite understand.  But, though of course the little one’s affair is the least important, we had better get to the bottom of that first, and I should like to tell you what really happened.’

She told her story, and how Valetta had been tempted and then bullied into going beyond the first peeps, and finding she did not produce the impression she wished, she begged Miss Elbury to talk it over with the head-mistress.  It was all in the telling.  Miss Elbury’s young cousin, Miss Mellon, had been brought under rebuke, and into great danger of dismissal, through Valetta Merrifield’s lapse; and it was no wonder that she had warned her kinswoman against ’the horrid little deceitful thing,’ who had done so much harm to the whole class.  ’Miss Mohun was running about over the whole place, but not knowing what went on in her own house!’ And as to Miss White, Miss Elbury mentioned at last, though with some reluctance, that it was believed that she had been on the point of a private marriage, and of going to Italy with young Stebbing, when her machinations were detected, and he was forced to set off without her.

With this in her mind, the governess could not be expected to accept as satisfactory what was not entire confutation or contradiction, and Miss Mohun saw that, politely as she was listened to, it was all only treated as excuse; since there could be no denial of Gillian’s folly, and it was only a question of degree.