“You are quite mistaken in me indeed,” I said, trying to keep down my annoyance. “I can prove it to you by something that happened to me not very long ago. I knew a person against whom I had heard nothing who always seemed to me to look good-natured and simple. And then I found out that he was really a most wicked man; and when I saw him after that his very face seemed changed to me, to look evil and cunning; and the sight of him made me shrink.” I was thinking of Tom Parkes and the change I had seemed to see in him that morning. Mr. Rayner looked at me keenly while I said this; but I was not afraid of his finding out whom I meant in such a cautious statement. “And what would you do if, in the course of your career as a governess, you found yourself in a family of whose morals you could not approve? Would you give them lectures on the error of their ways and try to convert them all round, Miss Christie?” “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that!” said I humbly. “If I found myself among very dreadful people, I should just run away back to my uncle’s house, where my mother lives, on the first opportunity, without saying anything to any one till I was gone, and without even writing to say I was coming, lest my letter should be intercepted. I should be so horribly afraid of them.” “Well, child, I hope you will never have to do anything so desperate as that; but the profession of teaching has its dangers for a beautiful woman,” he said gravely. The last words gave a shock to me. I had never heard them applied to me before, and for a moment I was without an answer. He had been sitting on my seat, and I had been standing with my back against a young oak-tree, a few feet from him and nearer to the pond. He got up and came towards me, when a shrill little cry as from out of the ground caused him to start. It was the only sound that ever drew forth such a display of ordinary human weakness from self-possessed Mr. Rayner. It came from the lips of his baby-daughter Mona, who, ragged, dirty, and withered-looking as usual, had walked or crawled through the mud and rushes till she had silently taken her place in the long grass a little way from us, and who now, seeing her father approach, had given vent to her extraordinary dislike of him in her usual undutiful manner. For one moment I saw in the dusk a look pass over Mr. Rayner’s face which made me catch my breath; it reminded me instantly of his tone on that Sunday night when he had caught Sarah in the garden; and, quickly as it passed and gave place to a light laugh, it had frightened me and made me long to escape. Mona was an excuse. “Oh, you naughty little girl to be out so late at night--and without a hat! Sarah must have forgotten you. Come--I must take you in now. Be a good girl, and come with me.”