As Esther Lane and her pupil crossed the drawbridge I was leaning over the extreme end of the parapet in the most natural manner in the world. I pretended not to notice them, and only permitted myself to be aroused from a contemplation of the beautiful scenery which lay below by the child flinging his arms with a scream of delight round my legs.
She blushed as she apologised for her charge. She was evidently a little nervous as to what her employers might think if they saw her walking with one of their guests, and, after a short interchange of commonplaces, tried to get rid of me. I refused to be shaken off, and a couple of hundred yards took us out of sight of the castle.
We dropped at once into a style of conversation which was almost intimate, and although I was with her barely three quarters of an hour she confided a great deal in me.
Not that there was much to confide. She was the daughter of a solicitor who had left nothing but debts. Her mother was dead, and she was absolutely alone in the world. Her only relations were some very distant cousins who were so poor that it had been impossible for them to help her in any way.
“I was very lucky,” she said, gratefully, “to get such a good situation, and it came about in the quaintest way. Lady Gascoyne had seen all sorts of people with diplomas and recommendations which I had not got, and she saw me sitting in the waiting-room as she passed out. I don’t think the agent quite liked her engaging me, but Lady Gascoyne insisted that I was just the person she wanted, and here I am.”
She smiled contentedly. She evidently considered herself an extremely fortunate young woman.
She attracted me enormously without in any way usurping the place of the two women who already counted for so much in my life.
All too soon I was obliged to leave her and hurry back to Lord Gascoyne, whom I found waiting for me.
It was the first opportunity I had had of really impressing him, and I did not waste my time. I took such an absorbing interest in everything about me that I fancy he was surprised to find himself talking so much and so intimately.
I was perfectly ready to enter into the subjects which interested him most. He was evidently deeply imbued with a belief in the divine right of aristocracy, and with no superficial sense of its responsibilities. He was above all things a serious man, with little sense of humour. I imagined that Lady Gascoyne must find him dull, but his qualities were essentially those which command women’s respect and hold them with a certain kind of fear.