for you to sacrifice yourself to in return for the roses.”

I laughed back and left the room, and, putting my desk under my flowers, went towards the staircase. Sarah was standing near the foot of it, wearing a very forbidding expression.

“So you’re bewitched too!” she said, with a short laugh, and turned sharply towards the servants’ hall.

And I wondered what she meant, and why Mr. and Mrs. Rayner kept in their service such a very rude and disagreeable person.

CHAPTER V.

The next day was Sunday, to which I had already begun to look forward eagerly, as one does in the country, as a break in the monotonous round of days. Old Mr. Reade was not at church, and his son sat in his place with his back to me. Instead of putting his elbows on his knees through the prayers as he had done on the Sunday before, he would turn right round and kneel in front of his seat, facing me—which was a little disconcerting, for, as he knelt with his chin on his hands and his head back, he seemed to be saying all the responses to me, and I could not raise my eyes for a minute from my book without having my attention distracted in spite of myself.After service, as we stood about in the churchyard, I heard Mr. Rayner telling the doctor and two of the farmers about the races he had been to the week before, and of his having won fifteen pounds on a horse the name of which I forget; and he took out of his pocket a torn race-card, seeming surprised to find it there, and said it must have been that which had caused his thoughts to wander during the sermon. He asked Mrs. Reade whether her husband was ill, and did not seem at all affected by the cool manner in which she answered his inquiries.

“I had the pleasure of lunching with a relative of yours, Mrs. Reade, on the course at Newmarket last week--Lord Bramley. He is a cousin of yours, is he not?”

“Hardly a cousin; but he is connected with my family, Mr. Rayner,” she answered more graciously.

“He thinks more of the connection than you seem to do, for he asked me particularly how you were, and whether you thought of going up to town this autumn. I told him I could not give him any information as to your intended movements, but that you had never looked better than when I saw you last.”

And Mrs. Reade was still talking to Mr. Rayner, with more affability in her haughtiness, when Haidee and I started on our walk home.

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