"Ah, well," said the woman, half disappointed, for she did not care for Archie, "ye'll have forgotten all about it by then."
CHAPTER XXXV.
A DISCOVERY.
There woman's voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood's tale is told;
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.
Hemans.
Bluebell was settled in her new abode, about fifteen miles from London: and certainly few governesses have the luck to drop into a more sunshiny home. Only two little girls, pleasantly disposed; no banishment to the school-room. They all mingled sociably together after lessons were over,—walked, drove in an Irish car, or played croquet and gardened as the spring advanced.
Mr. Markham was a barrister in London, and came down to dinner most days—not always, though; and his wife, still a young woman, was glad enough to find a companion in Bluebell. Beauty, too, unless it excites jealousy, is agreeable to look at, and she soon became interested in the young Canadian. But after a while she was puzzled by her. There was a far-off, touching look in her eyes that had come there since marriage, and she was reserved about herself, though the stiffness of first acquaintance had long ago given way to affectionate intimacy. For a girl apparently so frank to be at the same time so guarded suggested something to be concealed. Mrs. Markham, being a woman, could not refrain from speculating about it. She had elicited many lively descriptions of Bluebell's life in Canada, and the children were never weary of sleighing and toboggining stories. But these were general subjects; her narratives were never personal ones.
"By-the-bye," observed Mrs. Markham, one day, "how strange it was that poor child, Evelyn Leighton, dying just as you were going there! Her mother told me of it when she enclosed Mrs. Rolleston's letter. But you arrived in October, I think. Where were you those few months?"
"I was staying with a friend," replied Bluebell; but her hand shook and she became crimson.