"It may. Let us hope it will. There was something very straightforward about that girl's eyes, and her voice was particularly pleasant. It reminded me of somebody, but who the somebody is I can't for the life of me remember."
"By the way, didn't you tell me the other day you knew of a nursery governess who wanted work? Can she come and see me as well? Perhaps you have found out more about her by now?"
"She has just succeeded in hearing of work," Rupert answered, and Cicely noticed that, as before, he spoke with a trace of embarrassment. "I have found out nothing more about her, but I hear she is, or hopes to be, 'suited,' as the servants say."
"I am very strongly inclined to try the girl who brought Baba in from the fog. Something about her appealed to me, and she must be able to produce some kind of reference. She can't just have 'growed,' like Topsy, into her present position. Oh! Dawson, who and what is it?" she broke off to say, as the butler's stately form and impassive face appeared in the doorway.
"Sir Arthur Congreve wishes to see your ladyship very particularly," was the reply.
"I will be down in one moment," she answered; and, when the door had closed noiselessly after the butler, she turned to Rupert, and made a small grimace.
"Now, what has brought that tiresome old person here to-day," she demanded of the world in general; "you don't know him, do you? He is a cousin of John's; and the most intolerable bore ever created to worry his long-suffering relations."
"I know him by name, naturally; but I never had the pleasure——"
"Come and have it now." Cicely sprang to her feet, and rang the bell. "I must get a housemaid to take care of Baba; and you come and be introduced to my pet bugbear. He and his wife hardly ever come to town. They look upon it as modern Babylon, sunk in iniquity. He is hugely rich, and their jewels are amazing, but very few people ever see them. He lives in a very remote corner of the country, somewhere on the Welsh border, about ten miles from every reasonable sort of place, and my private opinion is that he is more mad than sane."
"Why?"