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, and such simple flowers. The house was built on the very border of the marsh, at the bottom of a hill which sloped down, covered with trees, towards the dining-room side of the house. I made my way round to the front and the moss-grown portico--from here one caught glimpses of the marsh through the thick trees. I followed a grass-path cut through them, facing the front of the house, until I came to the pond which had excited my admiration from the dog-cart. Here the vegetation grew unchecked. The water was half covered with smooth green duckweed and water-lilies, and the reeds and rushes, which grew tall and thick round the margin, had encroached much upon the little sheet of water. The path I had followed was continued through the trees, within a few feet of the pond, to the outer edge of the little wood which enclosed the house and garden; there a few rough steps over the fence connected it with the foot-path along the borders