Desirée made a very slight smiling curtsey to her opponent, and pressed Joanna’s arm lightly with her fingers to keep down the retort which trembled on that young lady’s lips. Then they went away together to the little supplementary musical lesson. Melmar had never turned round, nor taken the slightest notice, but he observed, notwithstanding, not only all that was done, but all that was looked and said, and it struck him, perhaps for the first time, that the English of Desirée was perfectly familiar and harmonious English, and that she never either paused for a word nor translated the idiom of one tongue into the speech of another. Uneasy suspicions began to play about his mind: he could scarcely say what he feared, yet he feared something. The little governess was French undeniably and emphatically--and yet she was not French, either, yet bore an unexplainable something of familiarity and home-likeness which had won for her the heart of Aunt Jean, and had startled himself unawares from her first introduction to Melmar. He stood at the window, looking out upon the blank, winterly landscape, the leafless trees in the distance, the damp grass and evergreens near the door, as the cheerful notes of Joanna’s music came stealing through the cold passages. The music was not in bad time, and it was in good taste, for Joanna was ambitious, and Desirée, though not an extraordinary musician herself, kept her pupil to this study with the most tenacious perseverance. As Melmar listened, vague thoughts, almost of fear, stole over him. He had been a lawyer, and a lawyer of a low class, smart in schemes and trickeries. He was ready to suspect everybody of cunning and the mean cleverness of deceit. Perhaps this was a little spy whom he fostered in his house. Perhaps her presence in the Edinburgh school was a trick to attract Joanna, and her presence here a successful plot to undermine and find out himself. His face grew redder still as he “put things together;” and by the time the music ceased, Melmar had concocted and found out (it is so easy to find out what one has concocted one’s own self,) a very pretty little conspiracy. He _had_ found it out, he was persuaded, and it should go no further--trust him for that! Accordingly, when his daughter and her governess returned, Melmar paid them a compliment upon their music, and was disposed to be friendly, as it appeared. Finally, after he had exhausted such subjects of chat as occurred to him, he got up, looking at Desirée, who was now busy with her embroidery. “I rather think, mademoiselle, you have been more than three months here,” said Melmar, “and I have been inconsiderate and ungallant enough to forget the time. I’ll speak with you about that in my study, if you’ll favor me by coming there. I never speak of business but in my own room--eh, Joan? You got your thrashings there when you were young enough. Where does mademoiselle give you them now?”