y what Miss Reinhart had desired her to
say.

"You had better tell Sir Roland yourself," said my governess, in her
cold, impassive manner. "It has nothing whatever to do with me. Sir
Roland wishes me to attend to these things, and I have done so--the
result does not lie with me."

"I have lived here, the most faithful and devoted of servants, for more
than fifty years. Why should you turn me away, or seek to turn me away?"
she said. "I have never wronged you. You may get one more clever, but no
one who will love my lady as I do--no one who will serve her one-half so
faithfully or so well, try your best, Miss Reinhart."

"I have nothing to do with it," she replied coldly. "I will tell Sir
Roland that you desire to leave--there my business ends."

"I beg your pardon, Miss Reinhart, there it does not end. I have no wish
to leave the place and family I love so well; but I say that I would
rather leave than obey you."

"I will word your message just as you wish," she said; "there shall be
no mistake."

I was with her when that conversation was repeated to Sir Roland, and I
may say that was my first real experience in the real deceit of the
world. Repeated to him, it bore quite a different aspect; it was an
insolent rebellion against proper authority, and my father resented it
very much.

"Unless you had told me yourself, I would not have believed it, Miss
Reinhart."

"It is quite true," she replied, calmly, looking, in her exquisite
morning dress, calm, sweet and unruffled as an angel.

I believe, honestly, that from that time she tried to make things worse.
Every day the feud increased, until the whole household seemed to be
ranged one against the other. If the housekeeper said one thing, Miss
Reinhart at once said the opposite. Then an appeal would be made to Sir
Roland, who gradually became worn and worried of the very sound of it.

"You will do no good," said Miss Reinhart to my father, "until you have
pensioned that old housekeeper off. Once done, you will have perfect
peace."

Constant dripping wears away a stone. My father was so accustomed to
hearing she must go that at last the idea became familiar to him. I am
quite sure that Miss Reinhart had made this her test; that she had said
to herself--if she had her own way in this, she should in everything
else. It was her test of what she might do and how far she might go.

It came at last. The blow fell on us, and she won. My father spoke
seriously to my