y well on the piano; but these were her only
accomplishments. There was a look of guile and subtlety in her face, a
sound of it in her voice. She seemed afraid of me, and would start if I
suddenly approached her. In her behaviour she was respectful and
complaisant, even to servility: she attempted to flatter and fawn upon me
at first, but I soon checked that. Her fondness for her little pupil was
overstrained, and I was obliged to remonstrate with her on the subject of
over-indulgence and injudicious praise; but she could not gain his heart.
Her piety consisted in an occasional heaving of sighs, and uplifting of
eyes to the ceiling, and the utterance of a few cant phrases. She told
me she was a clergyman's daughter, and had been left an orphan from her
childhood, but had had the good fortune to obtain a situation in a very
pious family; and then she spoke so gratefully of the kindness she had
experienced from its different members, that I reproached myself for my
uncharitable thoughts and unfriendly conduct, and relented for a time,
but not for long: my causes of dislike were too rational, my suspicions
too well founded for that; and I knew it was my duty to watch and
scrutinize till those suspicions were either satisfactorily removed or
confirmed.

I asked the name and residence of the kind and pious family. She
mentioned a common name, and an unknown and distant place of abode, but
told me they were now on the Continent, and their present address was
unknown to her. I never saw her speak much to Mr. Huntingdon; but he
would frequently look into the school-room to see how little Arthur got
on with his new companion, when I was not there. In the evening, she sat
with us in the drawing-room, and would sing and play to amuse him or us,
as she pretended, and was very attentive to his wants, and watchful to
anticipate them, though she only talked to me; indeed, he was seldom in a
condition to be talked to. Had she been other than she was, I should
have felt her presence a great relief to come between us thus, except,
indeed, that I should have been thoroughly ashamed for any decent person
to see him as he often was.

I did not mention my suspicions to Rachel; but she, having sojourned for
half a century in this land of sin and sorrow, has learned to be
suspicious herself. She told me from the first she was 'down of that new
governess,' and I soon found she watched her quite as narrowly as I did;
and I was glad of