However, he still continued to make ineffectual efforts to raise the heavy latch, but each time the restive horse swerved or the whip slipped, until I stood watching the struggle intently, and grew quite excited and half inclined to call out to him “Now!” when the horse stood still for a minute. It seemed to me that he deliberately missed all the best opportunities, and I was frowning with impatience, when he suddenly looked up and his eyes met mine. There was nothing for it then but in common civility to go and open the gate for him myself; so I walked up the drive very reluctantly and opened it wide without a smile. “Thank you, thank you--so much obliged to you! I wouldn’t have given you so much trouble for worlds. If only this brute would stand still!” “Pray don’t mention it. It is no trouble at all,” I said icily, occupied in keeping my armful of flowers together. And he raised his hat and rode off at a walking pace, while I shut the gate and turned to go down the drive again. I had such a curiously hurt and disappointed feeling--I could not tell why; but I supposed that, being a dependant, I was naturally very sensitive, and it was surely a slight on Mr. Reade’s part not even to speak to me when we were all in the drawing-room. “I dare say he wouldn’t have let me open the gate for him if I hadn’t been only a governess,” I thought, as a lump came into my throat. “I wish I hadn’t--oh, I wish I hadn’t! I wish I had let him get off his horse, or jump over it, or anything rather than make me play groom for him.” And the flowers I was looking at began to grow misty, when again I heard hoofs behind me and the latch of the gate go, and, glancing round, I saw Mr. Reade on horseback inside the gate. He had opened it without any difficulty this time. He seemed to look a little embarrassed, “ashamed of his own clumsiness the first time,” I thought severely; and, jumping off his horse, he led him towards me, saying-- “I must apologize for returning so soon, but I find I have lost a stone from my ring, and I think it must have dropped out while I was fumbling at the gate just now. It is much easier to open from the outside.” “Do you think so? We don’t find any difference,” I said simply.