‘There is nothing so hard, nothing so difficult as to get a governess nowadays,’ said the Countess of Wolverhampton, quite unaware that she was but echoing the complaint of many ladies of a lesser degree, to the effect that it is next to impossible to procure pattern cooks, prize housemaids, exemplary seamstresses, or model kitchen-maids, in these degenerate times. ‘I mean a really satisfactory governess of course,’ added the noble mistress of High Tor. Lady Wolverhampton and her two elder daughters were the sole occupants of the smallest of the suite of drawing-rooms, the windows of which were yet open to admit the balmy air of the hot evening. Dinner was but just over, and the flush of the sinking sun was faintly visible on the heathy ridges and pine-groves to the west. ‘It is very tiresome, mamma,’ said sympathetic Lady Maud. ‘It is more than tiresome,’ rejoined the Countess. ‘It makes me, on your sister’s account, very anxious. If I had known, when Miss Grainger left us, how very long it would take to replace her, and that dear Alice would be for months at a stand-still so far as her education went, I should not have parted with her so readily.’ ‘But she left us because she was going to be married,’ said Lady Gladys smiling; ‘and we could not, I suppose, have forbidden the banns on account of the scarcity of good governesses. I wonder, by the way, how the scarcity can exist, when we are so perpetually informed that the governess market—a phrase which I don’t like, suggesting as it does white slavery, involuntary servitude, and the auctioneer’s hammer—is overstocked.’ ‘That sounds clever, Gladys,’ answered Lady Wolverhampton in her plain way; ‘but I am afraid that, like most clever-sounding things, it proves nothing. I could get a highly certificated instructress, a person primed with information on particular subjects, warranted to be worth a handsome salary, a’—— ‘A teaching-machine, in fact,’ suggested bright Lady Gladys, seeing that her mother hesitated for the lack of a word. ‘Precisely. A teaching-machine,’ resumed the Countess. ‘But I don’t want one. I wish Alice’s governess, whoever she may be, to be a good sensible young woman, such as Miss Grainger was; and instead of that, all my correspondents write to me of the degrees and diplomas that have been taken out by those they recommend. I suppose I am an old-fashioned person, but I do wish’—— But before the Countess of Wolverhampton could complete her discourse on the governess topic, the door was jerked open, and the old butler, who had permitted himself to turn the handle for once with such unconventional vivacity, stood gasping in the doorway with a face as white as his cravat.