“Does she live here?” said Ralph, as though he doubted whether anything superlatively good would be found beneath Sir Matthew’s roof. “She is my nurse,” said Evereld. “We came from India you know last February. Her husband was a soldier but he died, and then she came to be our servant. Look, some more callers are coming in, now is our time to slip out.” Ralph gladly followed the little girl as she glided dexterously from the room, and it was with a sense of mingled triumph and relief that they found themselves outside on the staircase. “Fraulein Ellerbeck and I have been talking all day about your coming,” said Evereld, as they toiled up to the top of the house. “The telegram only came at breakfast.” “They must all have thought it an awful bore to have me,” said Ralph, remembering Lady Mactavish’s preference for having her house to herself. “We schoolroom people didn’t think it a bore,” said Evereld, gaily. “You can’t think how dull it is to have no one to play with. I could hardly do my French this afternoon for wondering about you, and once when the master asked me something about the difference between _connaître_ and _savoir_, I said, by mistake, ‘Ralph Denmead.’ It was dreadful! Everyone laughed.” She laughed herself at the remembrance. “But, you see, I had been thinking how well we should get to know each other.” A comforting sense of comradeship crept into Ralph’s sore heart; he forgot his troubles for a while as he looked at the merry face beside him. It was what he would have called an “awfully jolly” little face, with soft curves and a dainty little mouth and chin, a rounded forehead from which the hair was unfashionably thrown back, and a pair of clear blue eyes that made him think of speedwell blossoms. Evereld led him in triumph to the schoolroom to introduce him to her governess, and Miss Ellerbeck’s warm German greeting, so unlike the chilly reception he had met with in the drawing-room, at once set him at his ease. Bridget, too, accorded him a hearty welcome, and brought in enough toast even to satisfy a hungry schoolboy. She was a motherly person, with one of those rather melancholy dark faces of almost Spanish outline which one meets with among the Mayo peasants. But not all her wanderings or her troubles as a soldier’s wife and widow had robbed her of that delicious quaint humour which brightens many a desolate Irish cabin, and which brightened some parts of this great desolate London house. CHAPTER III “I do not love thee, Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell; But this alone I know full well, I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.”