However, I got back safely to the bottom of the staircase without seeing or hearing anything, and I was creeping along the passage when I caught the first faint sound of voices. I stopped, then went on again softly, while the sounds became plainer, and I found that they proceeded from Mr. Rayner’s study, the door of which I had to pass. I discovered by the thin thread of light it let out upon the passage that this door was ajar, at the same moment that I recognized Sarah’s voice. She was speaking in a low sullen tone, and, as I drew nearer, I was arrested half against my will by words which seemed to apply to myself—“Against the stupid baby-face of a chit hardly out of the nursery herself. Governess indeed!”
“Is that all you have to say?” said Mr. Rayner very low, but in his coldest, most cutting tone.
“That’s—that’s all I have to say,” said Sarah, with a choking sound in her voice.
The woman was evidently unhappy; I almost pitied her.
“Then the matter is easily settled. You can go.”
“I can go! I go! Do you know what you’re saying? Do you think you could replace me as easily as you can such as her?” said she, forgetting all respect due to her master, as her voice, still low, trembled with rage.
“That is my affair. You wished me to choose between the services of an underpaid governess and those of an overpaid servant. I have chosen.”
“Overpaid! My services overpaid! My services can’t be overpaid!” she hissed out.
“As long as you joined discretion to your other undoubted good qualities, I paid you according to that estimate. Now that you let yourself be swayed beyond all bounds of prudence by trifling feelings of jealousy and spite, like a foolish girl, your value runs down to that level. You are no longer a girl, Sarah, and your position is changed in many ways since then, in most for the better. If you cannot accept the changes quietly, you had better go.”
“And you would let me go—for a new-comer?” said the woman passionately.