pon the letters received. To breakfast alone, or sit
alone, was for him a torture; he sighed always when the breakfast bell
rang, and we knew that it was a torture in its way. When my mother found
it out she insisted upon my joining him every morning. I was but a
child, and could not interest him very much.

Now the matter was quite different. There was Miss Reinhart, fresh and
beautiful as the morning, witty and graceful, ready to ply him with
flatteries, making tea for him with her own white hands, talking in the
very brightest and most animated style. She had brilliant powers of
conversation, and no one could be more amusing. Although I hated her, I
often found myself hanging on the words that fell from her lips.

No wonder that the breakfast hour was prolonged, and that, often after
the urn had grown cold, my father would cry out that he wanted more tea.
Miss Reinhart arranged his papers for him; she laid them ready to his
hand; they discussed the politics and the principal events of the day.

Young as I was, I was struck with her animation and verve. She spoke
with such vivacity; her splendid face lighted with earnest, graceful
enthusiasm. She held very original and clever ideas about everything,
and it often happened that the conversation was prolonged until my
father would take out his watch and exclaim with wonder at the time.
Then Miss Reinhart would blush, and, taking me by the hand, disappear.
More than once my father followed us, and, taking my hand, would say:

"Let us have a walk on the terrace before the lessons begin, Laura--Miss
Reinhart will come with us."

But it was not to me he talked.

In the early days of her arrival I heard my dear mother once, when my
father was speaking of her fine manners, say:

"We ought to be proud to have so grand a lady for governess."

Poor mamma, who knows the price she paid for a lady governess?

It was when these morning visits grew so long that I first began to
notice the tone in which Miss Reinhart spoke of my mother.

She would lean her beautiful head just a little forward, her eyes bright
with sweetest sympathy, her voice as beautifully sweet as the cooing of
the ring-dove.

"How is dear Lady Tayne this morning, Sir Roland?" she would ask.

"I am afraid there is little difference and no improvement," was his
reply.

"Ah, how sad--what a sad fate--so young and so afflicted. It must be
dreadful for you, Sir Roland. I sympathize so much with you. I never