Such an offer, in the eyes of a buxom business-like woman of forty-two, was too advantageous to be refused. Mrs. Melville thought so; and, after speedily disposing of her house and selling the scholastic good-will and name to her senior teacher, she married her cousin with the utmost composure, and dutifully accompanied him to his Canadian home in order to undertake the mental and moral education of her four step-children.
To her junior governess, Miss Lina Grahame, Mrs. Melville gave on parting a travelling-clock, an ivory-bound prayer-book, and some excellent advice.
"I have only one fault to find with you, my dear," she had said, kindly—"you are too pretty. It grew to be quite awkward sending away the foreign masters because they made themselves silly about you, and the pupils noticed it. No—I don't tell you to cut your hair off or to wear blue spectacles; but I do say that I am not surprised that Miss Finch doesn't want to keep you on with the school, although you have such nice ways with the children and such a good French accent. I have myself been a very successful teacher—but then I have always been plain. Now, although it goes against the grain to say it, for a girl with your appearance I suppose that the most desirable profession is marriage."
Laline had suddenly flushed at Mrs. Melville's words, and then burst into a peal of laughter.
"Now, Mrs. Melville," she had cried, "that comes very oddly from you, who are just marrying for the second time! And I have often told you that it is useless to talk like that to me, as I shall never marry."
This parting conversation recurred to Laline as she turned over the advertisement-pages of the papers on this wintry afternoon in search of a suitable scholastic engagement.
"I wonder," she reflected, "that all those years I never let out that I was really married in talking to Mrs. Melville. I often felt strongly tempted to tell her, but that it seemed impossible that just a visit to a Consul's house, and some mumbled words, and a ring which I never wore, can mean a tie for life. It is not as if it had been in a church, and I had gone through a proper religious ceremony, with some kindly-faced clergyman to utter the beautiful words I know. I should have held that to be binding; but as to this, it all seems now like an incident in a half-forgotten dream. And yet I suppose that, if Wallace Armstrong is not dead, I really am his wife, and shall be as long as he and I both live. Yet if he saw me now he would not know me, and I think I should hardly recognise him. It seems absurd. Luckily I have never been the least little bit in love, and do not mean to be, except in day-dreams and with wholly imaginary persons. I never felt anything, I know, when Monsieur Marchand and Herr Pfeiffer got sentimental about me. I suppose they behaved like that just because I was what Mrs. Melville called pretty. She thinks my looks will stand in my way; she would have been amused at my impudence in answering yesterday this advertisement, which I see is inserted again to-day."
And, with her soft eyes sparkling with fun, Laline read over the somewhat remarkable insertion to which she had replied.
"Wanted, as companion and amanuensis to a lady, a well-educated young girl, refined and beautiful, of high character and gentle birth. Apply by letter, enclosing photograph, to Occult, Box 72,631, advertisement-office, Daily Post."
"Occult, whoever she may be, must be rather mad," Laline decided. "But I haven't a doubt that she will get dozens of answers. I wonder what she is like? There is an originality about the advertisement which is fascinating; and to be a companion and amanuensis sounds much nicer and more vague than to be teacher in a school."