She took the child from me, thankful to have been spared the trouble of hunting and catching the little wild thing, and carried her off, leaving me wondering whether my pupil would be as eerie a creature as her sister. As there was nothing to invite me to stay indoors, I went out again, this time to explore the side of the house which faced the marsh. Here the grass grew untrimmed and rank up to the very walls; and, as I made my way through it, my feet sank from time to time into little unseen pools and swamps, which wetted them up to the ankles after a few steps. However, I went on as carefully as I could, past a tangle of shrubs, yew-trees, and straggling briers, until, pushing aside the low-hanging branches of a barberry-tree, I found myself within a few feet of a window so heavily shaded by gnarled and knotted ivy that for a few moments I did not notice a woman’s face staring at me intently through the glass. As soon as I caught sight of the sunken face and large lustreless gray eyes, I knew, by her likeness to the child at the pond, that this was Mrs. Rayner. I retreated in as leisurely a manner as I could, trying to look as if I had not seen her; for there was something in the eager, hopeless stare of her eyes as mine met them which made me feel like a spy.
I crept back into the house and up to my room, unpacked my boxes, and sat down to write to my mother an account of my journey and arrival. I did not tell her quite all that I had seen, or all the strange impressions this first evening had made upon me. I felt very anxious to communicate them to somebody; but my mother was a gentle nervous woman, whom I had already, young as I was, learned to lead rather than be led by; I knew that the least suggestion of mystery would cause her an agony of doubt and anxiety about her child which I could not allay by letter; so I contented myself with a description of the picturesque beauty of the place and of Mr. Rayner’s kindness. I had to finish this by candle-light, and, when I had ended, I rose and went to the window to give one more look at the scene under a new aspect. My window, I afterwards found, was over the one at which I had seen Mrs. Rayner’s face; it was high enough from the ground for me to have, through the gaps between the trees, a good view of the marsh and the hills beyond.
A low cry of admiration burst from me as I looked out. Over all the wide expanse of marsh, which seemed to stretch for miles on either hand, lay a white mist, rising only a few feet from the ground, but so thick as to look like a silver lake in the moonlight; a range of hills two or three miles off seemed to mark the opposite shore. The mist was dense under my window, too, on the very grass that I had waded through a couple of hours before. As I looked out and tried to imagine little fairy boats in the elders which rose here and there out of the mist-hidden marsh, a shiver passed over me; and I drew in my head with a sudden change of thought.
“How cold it is! Mr. and Mrs. Rayner must be devoted admirers of the picturesque to live in a house that must be so very damp!”
CHAPTER II.
I was down in the dining-room the next morning, with the unfailing punctuality of a new-comer, at the sound of the breakfast-bell, before any one else was there. Mr. Rayner came in in a few minutes, handsome, cheerful, but rather preoccupied; and I was listening to his bright small-talk with the polite stranger’s smile, when I discovered, without having heard any sound, that Mrs. Rayner was in the room. She had glided in like a ghost, and, without more interest in the life around her than a ghost might show, she was standing at the table, waiting. I was thankful to see that there was no trace in her eyes now of the steadfast eager gaze which had disconcerted me on the night before, nothing but the limpest indifference to me in the way in which she held out her hand when her husband introduced me.
“She must have been pretty ten years ago,” I thought, as I looked at her thin face, with the fair faded complexion and dull gray eyes. There was a gentleness about her which would have been grace still, if she had taken any pains to set off by a little womanly coquetry her slim girl-like figure, small thin hands, and the masses of long brown hair which were carelessly and unbecomingly dragged away from her forehead and twisted up on her head.
Then the door opened, and the servants came in to prayers, with the elfish baby and a pretty delicate-looking child, blue-eyed and fair-haired, who was presented to me before breakfast as Haidee, my pupil.
Nobody talked during the meal but Mr. Rayner, and the only other noticeable thing was the improper behavior of the baby, who kept throwing bits of bread at her father when he was not looking, and aimed a blow with a spoon at him when he passed her chair to cut himself some cold meat. He saw it and laughed at her.
“It is a most extraordinary thing, Miss Christie,” said he; “but that child hates me.”