rs
claimed her attention; and that not unwholesomely, as it proved in the
sequel. For with the incontinent vanishing of Theresa Bilson into space,
or,--more accurately--into the very comfortable lodgings provided for her
by Miss Verity in Stourmouth, the mantle of the ex-governess-companion's
domestic responsibilities automatically descended upon her ex-pupil. The
said vanishing was reported to Damaris by Mary, on the day subsequent to
its occurrence, not without signs of hardly repressed jubilation. For
"Egypt," in this case represented by the Deadham Hard servants' hall, was
unfeignedly "glad at her departing."

"A good riddance, I call it--and we all know the rest of that saying,"
Mrs. Cooper remarked to an audience of Hordle and Mary Fisher, reinforced
by the Napoleonic Patch and his wife--who happened to have looked in from
the stables after supper--some freedom of speech being permissible,
thanks to the under-servants' relegation to the kitchen.

"I never could see she was any class myself. But the airs and graces
she'd give herself! You'll never persuade me she wasn't sweet on the
master. That was at the back of all her dressings up, and flouncings and
fidgetings. The impidence of it!--You may well say so, Mrs. Patch. But
the conceit of some people passes understanding. To be Lady Verity, if
you please, that was what she was after. To my dying day I shall believe
it. Don't tell me!"

Mary's announcement of the event was couched in sober terms, shorn of
such fine flowers of suggestion and comment. Yet it breathed an
unmistakable satisfaction, which, to Damaris' contrition, found instant
echo in her own heart. She ought, she knew, to feel distressed at poor
Theresa's vanishing--only she didn't and couldn't. As an inherent
consequence of the afore-chronicled bridge-crossing, Theresa was more
than ever out of the picture. To listen to her chatterings, to evade her
questionings would, under existing circumstances, amount to a daily trial
from which the young girl felt thankful to escape. For Damaris
entertained a conviction the circumstances in question would call for
fortitude and resource of an order unknown, alike in their sternness and
their liberality of idea, to Theresa's narrowly High Anglican and
academic standards of thought and conduct. She therefore ascertained from
her informant that Miss Verity had been as actively instrumental in the
vanishing--had, to be explicit, taken "Miss Bilson, and all her lugga