ousehold. It was plain that nobody loved him below stairs. Mrs.
Blinder took uncommon care with the dinner that night, but she snapped
at the kitchen-maid in a way quite unusual with her; and Mr. Wace, the
butler, a serious, slow-spoken man, went about his duties as if he'd
been getting ready for a funeral. He was a great Bible-reader, Mr. Wace
was, and had a beautiful assortment of texts at his command; but that
day he used such dreadful language that I was about to leave the table,
when he assured me it was all out of Isaiah; and I noticed that
whenever the master came Mr. Wace took to the prophets.

About seven, Agnes called me to my mistress's room; and there I found
Mr. Brympton. He was standing on the hearth; a big fair bull-necked
man, with a red face and little bad-tempered blue eyes: the kind of man
a young simpleton might have thought handsome, and would have been like
to pay dear for thinking it.

He swung about when I came in, and looked me over in a trice. I knew
what the look meant, from having experienced it once or twice in my
former places. Then he turned his back on me, and went on talking to
his wife; and I knew what _that_ meant, too. I was not the kind of
morsel he was after. The typhoid had served me well enough in one way:
it kept that kind of gentleman at arm's-length.

"This is my new maid, Hartley," says Mrs. Brympton in her kind voice;
and he nodded and went on with what he was saying.

In a minute or two he went off, and left my mistress to dress for
dinner, and I noticed as I waited on her that she was white, and chill
to the touch.

Mr. Brympton took himself off the next morning, and the whole house
drew a long breath when he drove away. As for my mistress, she put on
her hat and furs (for it was a fine winter morning) and went out for a
walk in the gardens, coming back quite fresh and rosy, so that for a
minute, before her color faded, I could guess what a pretty young lady
she must have been, and not so long ago, either.

She had met Mr. Ranford in the grounds, and the two came back together,
I remember, smiling and talking as they walked along the terrace under
my window. That was the first time I saw Mr. Ranford, though I had
often heard his name mentioned in the hall. He was a neighbor, it
appeared, living a mile or two beyond Brympton, at the end of the
village; and as he was in the habit of spending his winters in the
country he was almost the only company my mistress had at th