‘Mamma, Alice was right; and you have lost a treat worth a longer pilgrimage than that,’ said frank Lady Gladys, coming down, with Alice, radiant with delight, skipping at her side. ‘This Miss Gray (Maud, who is really getting fond of her, addresses her as “Ethel” already) has a voice that might make her fortune if she were less timid, and so sweet and liquid that one might fancy it the carol of a bird. Such a touch too on the keys! That jangling wheezy old school-room piano, on which excellent Miss Grainger used to pound so distressingly, gives out real music beneath those fingers of hers, and becomes full-toned and mellow. What a shame to throw away talent such as that upon the A B C work of teaching urchins the rudiments of knowledge!’
‘I never heard of these high musical attainments of Miss Gray’s, I am sure,’ said the puzzled Countess; ‘and I am almost as certain that your father never heard of them either. She was strongly recommended, I know, by an old college friend of my lord, a clergyman somewhere, and that is all I have learned concerning her. But if she is such a performer as you describe, I should like to hear her too.’
Lady Gladys shook her head. ‘I am not sure,’ she said, ‘whether so shy a song-bird can be coaxed into warbling before an audience of strangers. She really did seem quite startled and distressed when Alice began to clap her hands and Maud and I broke in upon her. She had no notion, she said, that her singing could be heard by any of us in that out-of-the-way corner of so large a house, and seemed to think she had taken a great liberty and infringed rules of social decorum. And it was all that even Maud, whom she likes, could do to persuade her to sing again, only a little bit of a ballad; but it all but brought tears into my eyes, hackneyed girl of the world as I am, you know.’
In explanation of which last speech, it may be mentioned that Lady Gladys, the beauty of the family, had gone through two London seasons under the chaperonage of her mother’s sister, the Marchioness of Plinlimmon, and that it was supposed that if she had remained unmarried still, it was not for want of offers matrimonial.
‘I was thinking, mamma,’ said Lady Maud, who had lingered longer with Ethel than her sister had done, ‘that you could scarcely do better than to engage Miss Gray, if it suits her, as a governess for Alice, instead of writing to every point of the compass in hopes that some friend will recommend some treasure. It’s not only that Ethel Gray is really too good for the routine of plodding tuition in a village school, but that she knows everything, or nearly everything, that Miss Grainger knew, and French and German quite as well as it is possible to acquire them in England. Gladys has told you, I am sure, what a musician she is. I do not know how you could do better.’
The Countess too did not know how she could do better than to engage such a successor to the oft-quoted Miss Grainger, provided she possessed the accomplishments with which she was credited, and were willing—which Lady Wolverhampton could scarcely doubt—to exchange her rustic pupils for the post of governess at High Tor House. And as, on inquiry, it seemed that Ethel’s acquirements had not been overrated, and that her magnificent voice and musical proficiency fully merited the encomiums of the girls, while Alice was a vehement partisan of the governess-elect, the Countess was ready to propose the formal installation of Ethel in that capacity, subject to ‘my lord’s’ approval, when he should return from some magisterial business at Pebworth.
It was, however, necessary, in the Countess’s opinion, to ask a question or two on other matters than that of competence to teach. The office of mistress of the village school was one thing; that of governess to an Earl’s youngest daughter was another. It would be satisfactory, the Countess thought, to know a little more of Miss Gray’s birth, parentage, and antecedents than any of the De Vere family did as yet know. Ethel’s simple frankness saved Lady Wolverhampton—who did not like to put direct questions, and was eminently unfit for the delicate operation of extracting by subtle talk and veiled inquiry what she wished to learn—a great deal of trouble.
‘My father is in Australia,’ she said, raising her clear eyes to meet those of the Countess. ‘He is, I believe, a merchant there; but even that I do not know with any certainty, though he has been living there for many years, and I have always been told that I was born in the colony. I came with him to England, I know, when I was a little child, and he returned there; and I have not seen him since then, and cannot remember him at all.’
Ethel’s story was a brief one. She had little to relate, save of her early youth, spent at Sandston, a minor bathing-place on the Norfolk coast, where Mr Gray, a widower, who had paid but a short visit to his native country, had left his only child under the care of an excellent woman, one Mrs Linklater, a widow and mistress of a lodging-house. Ethel’s eyes grew dim as she spoke of good motherly Mrs Linklater, at whose death, three years before, she had been received into the house of the clergyman, who had been a college friend of the Earl, and to whose wife she had been a sort of companion.
‘Dear Mrs Keating,’ said Ethel simply, ‘quite, I am afraid, spoiled me. For years and years, when Mrs Linklater was alive, I spent much of my time at the vicarage; and Mrs Keating, who was herself very accomplished, taught me almost all the little that I know. She was fond of music, and understood it as few understand it, and it is through her kindness that I learned to sing and play. She had no children living except the three sons who were making their way in the world; and I believe that she thought I was like a little daughter she had lost, and whose name, like mine, was Ethel, and so’——