I could not answer, could not ask why, for the next moment he was calling out good-by to Mr. Rayner, and, raising his hat to me, was walking by the side of the dog-cart up the steep drive that led through the garden to the road. I was sorry he was gone. I wanted to ask what he meant by his strange warning, and to thank him for his kindness. A distressing sense of loneliness came over me. Mr. Rayner, who had grown grave and silent and deeply occupied with his letters during the last part of the drive, had gone into the house forgetting to invite me in; the servant had disappeared with my last box. Instead of following her, I stood watching the dog-cart and its owner out of sight, until a harsh woman’s voice startled me.
“Won’t you come in? I’m to show you to your room.”
It was the gaunt servant who addressed me. I turned, blushing, and followed her into a low long hall, dark, cool, and old-fashioned, such as the outside of the house had prepared me for; up an oak-lined staircase; through a few of those short and inconvenient passages which abound in old houses that have been added to from time to time, to a corner-room, shabby, dark, and bare-looking, where my boxes were already installed. I sat down on one of these, the only friendly things I had about me, and began to cry. Somebody might at least have come to the door to meet me! I thought of Mr. Reade’s words, and began to wonder with a new sense of dread what Mrs. Rayner was like. Was she an invalid? Was she--mad? If not, why had she left the correspondence about her child’s governess entirely to her husband? My tears dried slowly as I went on puzzling myself uselessly about this mystery which must be so very soon solved; and I was scarcely ready when the servant returned to tell me that tea was waiting for me. But my curiosity was only to be sharpened. Tea was prepared for me alone, the servant saying that Mr. Rayner was busy, and had had his taken into the study. Not a word about Mrs. Rayner--no sign of a pupil! So great were my anxiety and curiosity that I forgot how hungry I was, and in a few minutes I had finished my tea, and was standing by the window looking out into the garden.
It was not yet seven o’clock and a bright summer evening. A light breeze had sprung up and was swaying the tops of the trees that grew thickly round the house. On the side of the dining-room a mossy lawn stretched from the roots of the trees right up to the French windows. I opened one of these and went out. I had never been in such a beautiful garden before. The grass was soft and springy and well kept; there were no stiff beds of geraniums and verbenas, but under the trees and against the house, and wherever there was a spare corner, grew clumps of Scotch and monthly roses, Canterbury bells, prince’s feather, 

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