The housekeeper beamed at her knowingly. “Ah, that is for her ladyship to tell you, my lady! But what would you say to a lovely young gentleman’s being closeted with your papa?”
Lady Harriet’s large blue eyes dilated; she said faintly: “Oh, no!”
Miss Abinger, a sensible-looking woman in the late thirties, rose from her seat, saying in a commonplace tone: “Lady Harriet will come to her ladyship directly. You will do well to tidy your hair, my dear. Come into your bed-chamber and let me draw a comb through it. You know your mama likes you to be neat in your appearance,”
“Harry, don’t be gone for ever!” begged Lady Maria, a buxom twelve-year-old. “Ten to one it is only one of Mama’s fusses!”
“Oh, hush, love!” Harriet whispered.
“Good gracious, Harry!” exclaimed Lady Caroline, who at sixteen bade fair to resemble her mother very nearly, “you don’t suppose it is Sale, do you?”
Harriet, blushing furiously, ran out of the room. Miss Abinger said severely: “You will oblige me, Caroline, by writing out in your fairest hand, and without blots, fifty times, Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his heart from troubles. ”She waited for a moment to be sure that her pupil dared not venture on any retort, and then followed Lady Harriet out of the room, and down one pair of stairs to a bedchamber at the back of the house.
Here, the abigail who was folding her young mistress’s dresses in silver paper, betrayed by her air of barely suppressed excitement that the rumour that was already running through the house had reached her ears. She greeted the governess with a gasp, and an involuntary question: “Oh, miss, is it true?”
Miss Abinger ignored this impertinence, and trod over to the dressing-table, before which Harriet had seated herself. “You have crushed your gown a trifle, my dear but it will not do to keep your mama waiting, and we must hope that she will not notice it. Let me take that comb!”
Harriet permitted her to remove it from her singularly nerveless grasp. “Oh, Abby, you do not think—?”