voice, begging her to come for a few weeks and try seemed to resound gently in the brougham. She had not accepted the situation; she had accepted something in Mrs. Corrie’s imagined voice coming to her confidently from the big wealthy house. The brougham passed a lamp and swerved in through a gate, bowling along over softly crunching gravel. She pressed reluctantly against the cushioned back. The drive had been too short.... Bennett’s friends had given the Corries wrong ideas about her. They wanted a governess. She was not a governess. There were governesses ... the kind of person they wanted. It was a mistake; another mistake ... the brougham made a beautiful dull humming, going along a tree-lined tunnel.... What did the Corries want of her, arriving in their brougham? What did they expect her to do?... 2 As the footman opened the door of the brougham, a door far back in the dim porch was flung back, letting out a flood of light, and the swift figure of a parlourmaid who seized Miriam’s Gladstone bag and the silver-mounted Banbury Park umbrella and led the way across the porch into the soft golden blaze. The Saratoga trunk had gone away with the brougham, and in a moment the door was closed and Miriam was standing, frightened and alone, in a fire-lit, lamp-lit, thickly carpeted enclosure within sound of a thin chalky voice saying “Ello, ello.” It seemed to come from above her. “Ello--ello--ello--ello,” it said busily, hurrying about somewhere above as she gazed about the terrifying hall. It was somehow like the box office of a large theatre, only much better; the lamplight, there seemed to be several lamps shaded with low-hanging old gold silk, and the rosy light from the huge clear fire in a deep grate fell upon a thick pale greeny yellow carpet, the little settees with their huge cushions, and the strange-looking pictures set low on dull gold walls. In two directions the hall went dimly away towards low archways screened by silently hanging bead curtains. “Ello--ello--ello--ello,” said the voice coming quickly downstairs. Half raising her eyes Miriam saw a pale turquoise blue silk dress, long and slender with deep frills of black chiffon round the short sleeves and a large frill draping the low-cut bodice, a head and face, sheeny bronze and dead white, coming across the hall. “Ow-de-do; so glad you’ve come,” said the voice, and two thin fingers and a small thin crushed handkerchief were pressed against her half-raised hand. “Are you famished? Deadly awful journey! I’m glad you’re tall. Wiggerson’ll take up your things. You must be starvin’. Don’t change. There’s only me. Don’t be long. I shall tell them to put on the soup.”