so
highly educated. She only occasionally came into the upper school--her
work was more with the girls of the lower school--but she was kind and
good-natured, and was universally popular because she could bear being
laughed at, and even enjoyed a joke against herself. Such a woman would
be sure to be a favorite with most girls, and Mary Arundel was as happy
in her life at the Court as any of her pupils. There were also French
and German governesses, and a lady to look after the wardrobes of the
older girls, and attend to them in case of any trifling indisposition.

Besides the resident teachers there was the chaplain and his wife. The
chaplain had his own quarters in a distant wing of the school. His name
was the Reverend Edmund Fairfax. He was an elderly man, with white hair,
a benign expression of face, and gentle brown eyes. His wife was a
somewhat fretful woman, who often wished that her husband would seek
preferment and leave his present circumscribed sphere of action. But
nothing would induce the Reverend Edmund Fairfax to leave Mrs. Haddo so
long as she required him; and when he read prayers morning and evening
in the beautiful old chapel, which had been built as far back as the
beginning of the eighteenth century, the girls loved to listen to his
words, and even at times shyly confided their little troubles to him.

Such was the state of things at Haddo Court when this story opens. Mrs.
Haddo was a woman of about thirty-eight years of age. She was tall and
handsome, of a somewhat commanding presence, with a face which was
capable, in repose, of looking a little stern; but when that same face
was lit up by a smile, the heart of every girl in the school went out to
her, and they thought no one else like her.

Mrs. Haddo was a widow, and had no children of her own. Her late husband
had been a great friend of Mr. Fairfax. At his death she had, after
careful reflection, decided to carry on the work which her mother had so
successfully conducted before her. Everything was going well, and there
was not a trace of care or anxiety on Mrs. Haddo's fine face.

There came a day, however, when this state of things was doomed to be
altered. There is no Paradise, no Garden of Eden, without its serpent,
and so Janet Haddo was destined to experience. The disturbing element
which came into the school was brought about in the most natural way.
Sir John Crawford, the father of one of Mrs. Haddo's favorite pupils,
called unexpec