My lady reaped the benefit of this lecture. Coming in from her somewhat unsatisfactory visit to the cook, she found the young lady dutifully practising the Moonlight sonata. My lady looked about the room, as if by good luck she might find something to avert weariness. Miss Thornycroft had hoped she should not die of _her_; my lady was beginning to hope she should not die of ennui. "Do you never have any books here? Novels?" "Sometimes," replied Mary Anne, turning round to speak. "We get them from the library at Jutpoint. There are some books upstairs in the book-case that used to be mamma's--Walter Scott's, and Dickens's, and others." The Moonlight sonata went on again. My lady, who had no soul for music, thought it the most wofully dull piece she had ever listened to. She sat inert on the sofa. Life--this life at the Red Court Farm--was already looking indescribably dreary. And she had pictured it as a second Utopia! It is ever so; when anticipation becomes lost in possession, romance and desire are alike gone. "How long has Sinnett lived here?" she suddenly asked, again interrupting Miss Thornycroft. "Ever so long," was the young lady's reply. "She came just before mamma died." "What are her precise functions here?--What does she call herself?" "We don't call her anything in particular. She is a sort of general servant, overlooking everything. She is housekeeper and manager." "Ah! she has taken a great deal of authority on herself, I can see." "Has she?" replied Mary Anne. "I have heard papa say she is one of the best servants we ever had; thoroughly capable." My lady gave her head a little defiant nod: and relapsed into silence and ennui. Somehow the morning was got through. In the afternoon they set out to walk to the heath; it was rather late, for my lady, lying on the sofa in her bedroom, dropped off to sleep after luncheon. The dinner hour had been postponed to eight in the evening in consequence of a message from Mr. Thornycroft. Winding round the churchyard, Mary Anne stood a moment and looked over the dwarf quickset hedge, on that side not much higher than her knee. My lady observed that her hands were clasped for a moment, that her lips moved. "What are you doing, Mary Anne?" "I never like to go by mamma's grave without staying a moment to look at it, and to say a word or two of prayer," was the simple answer. My lady laughed, not kindly. "That comes of having a Roman Catholic governess." "Does it!" answered the girl quietly, indignant at the laugh. "Mademoiselle happens to be a Protestant. I did not learn it from her, or from any one; it comes from my heart." Turning abruptly on to the heath, Mary Anne saw Mademoiselle Derode coming towards them, and sprung off to meet her with a glad step. Disappointment was in store for my lady's private dream of keeping Miss Derode as governess. Mademoiselle was then on her way to the Red Court to tell them she was leaving for France in two days.