hen she and the handsome
stranger first set eyes on each other.

The interview over, Mrs. Milroy's suspicions fastened at once and
immovably on her husband's mother.

She was well aware that there was no one else in London on whom the
major could depend to make the necessary inquiries; she was well aware
that Miss Gwilt had applied for the situation, in the first instance,
as a stranger answering an advertisement published in a newspaper. Yet
knowing this, she had obstinately closed her eyes, with the blind frenzy
of the blindest of all the passions, to the facts straight before her;
and, looking back to the last of many quarrels between them which
had ended in separating the elder lady and herself, had seized on the
conclusion that Miss Gwilt's engagement was due to her mother-in-law's
vindictive enjoyment of making mischief in her household. The inference
which the very servants themselves, witnesses of the family scandal, had
correctly drawn--that the major's mother, in securing the services of
a well-recommended governess for her son, had thought it no part of her
duty to consider that governess's looks in the purely fanciful interests
of the major's wife--was an inference which it was simply impossible
to convey into Mrs. Milroy's mind. Miss Gwilt had barely closed the
sick-room door when the whispered words hissed out of Mrs. Milroy's
lips, "Before another week is over your head, my lady, you go!"

From that moment, through the wakeful night and the weary day, the one
object of the bedridden woman's life was to procure the new governess's
dismissal from the house.

The assistance of the nurse, in the capacity of spy, was secured--as
Mrs. Milroy had been accustomed to secure other extra services which her
attendant was not bound to render her--by a present of a dress from the
mistress's wardrobe. One after another articles of wearing apparel which
were now useless to Mrs. Milroy had ministered in this way to feed the
nurse's greed--the insatiable greed of an ugly woman for fine clothes.
Bribed with the smartest dress she had secured yet, the household spy
took her secret orders, and applied herself with a vile enjoyment of it
to her secret work.

The days passed, the work went on; but nothing had come of it. Mistress
and servant had a woman to deal with who was a match for both of them.

Repeated intrusions on the major, when the governess happened to be in
the same room with him, failed to discover the sligh