ang in a rather tired voice; but her
songs, Massenet, Benjamin Goddard, and Augusta Holmes, were new to Philip;
and together they spent many hours at the piano. One day she wondered if
he had a voice and insisted on trying it. She told him he had a pleasant
baritone and offered to give him lessons. At first with his usual
bashfulness he refused, but she insisted, and then every morning at a
convenient time after breakfast she gave him an hour's lesson. She had a
natural gift for teaching, and it was clear that she was an excellent
governess. She had method and firmness. Though her French accent was so
much part of her that it remained, all the mellifluousness of her manner
left her when she was engaged in teaching. She put up with no nonsense.
Her voice became a little peremptory, and instinctively she suppressed
inattention and corrected slovenliness. She knew what she was about and
put Philip to scales and exercises.

When the lesson was over she resumed without effort her seductive smiles,
her voice became again soft and winning, but Philip could not so easily
put away the pupil as she the pedagogue; and this impression convicted
with the feelings her stories had aroused in him. He looked at her more
narrowly. He liked her much better in the evening than in the morning. In
the morning she was rather lined and the skin of her neck was just a
little rough. He wished she would hide it, but the weather was very warm
just then and she wore blouses which were cut low. She was very fond of
white; in the morning it did not suit her. At night she often looked very
attractive, she put on a gown which was almost a dinner dress, and she
wore a chain of garnets round her neck; the lace about her bosom and at
her elbows gave her a pleasant softness, and the scent she wore (at
Blackstable no one used anything but Eau de Cologne, and that only on
Sundays or when suffering from a sick headache) was troubling and exotic.
She really looked very young then.

Philip was much exercised over her age. He added twenty and seventeen
together, and could not bring them to a satisfactory total. He asked Aunt
Louisa more than once why she thought Miss Wilkinson was thirty-seven: she
didn't look more than thirty, and everyone knew that foreigners aged more
rapidly than English women; Miss Wilkinson had lived so long abroad that
she might almost be called a foreigner. He personally wouldn't have
thought her more than twenty-six.

"She's more than