“’Mrs. Catherick is a decent, well-behaved, respectable woman; middle-aged, and with the remains of having been moderately, only moderately, nice-looking.  There is something in her manner and in her appearance, however, which I can’t make out.  She is reserved about herself to the point of down-right secrecy, and there is a look in her face—­I can’t describe it—­which suggests to me that she has something on her mind.  She is altogether what you would call a walking mystery.  Her errand at Limmeridge House, however, was simple enough.  When she left Hampshire to nurse her sister, Mrs. Kempe, through her last illness, she had been obliged to bring her daughter with her, through having no one at home to take care of the little girl.  Mrs. Kempe may die in a week’s time, or may linger on for months; and Mrs. Catherick’s object was to ask me to let her daughter, Anne, have the benefit of attending my school, subject to the condition of her being removed from it to go home again with her mother, after Mrs. Kempe’s death.  I consented at once, and when Laura and I went out for our walk, we took the little girl (who is just eleven years old) to the school that very day.’”

Once more Miss Fairlie’s figure, bright and soft in its snowy muslin dress—­her face prettily framed by the white folds of the handkerchief which she had tied under her chin—­passed by us in the moonlight.  Once more Miss Halcombe waited till she was out of sight, and then went on—­

“’I have taken a violent fancy, Philip, to my new scholar, for a reason which I mean to keep till the last for the sake of surprising you.  Her mother having told me as little about the child as she told me of herself, I was left to discover (which I did on the first day when we tried her at lessons) that the poor little thing’s intellect is not developed as it ought to be at her age.  Seeing this I had her up to the house the next day, and privately arranged with the doctor to come and watch her and question her, and tell me what he thought.  His opinion is that she will grow out of it.  But he says her careful bringing-up at school is a matter of great importance just now, because her unusual slowness in acquiring ideas implies an unusual tenacity in keeping them, when they are once received into her mind.  Now, my love, you must not imagine, in your off-hand way, that I have been attaching myself to an idiot.  This poor little Anne Catherick is a sweet, affectionate, grateful girl, and says the quaintest, prettiest things (as you shall judge by an instance), in the most oddly sudden, surprised, half-frightened way.  Although she is dressed very neatly, her clothes show a sad want of taste in colour and pattern.  So I arranged, yesterday, that some of our darling Laura’s old white frocks and white hats should be altered for Anne Catherick, explaining to her that little girls of her complexion looked neater and better all in white than in anything else.  She hesitated and seemed puzzled for a