"You must let me be the best judge of that, Mademoiselle. I am afraid you have overtaxed your strength to-day. You are looking tired."

"I am not so, indeed. Not at all too tired to play, if you desire it."

"Thank you, Mademoiselle," said the Doctor simply.

There was a piano in the room, a tolerable one; and Alexia moved slowly toward it and sat down. It had become quite an inst.i.tution, this half-hour's playing which she gave the Doctor when he came up-stairs to bid the children good-night. He was disappointed if by any chance she missed it, perhaps because he hardly saw her at any other time, and because it was something to be able from his distant seat to watch her as she played. He learned her att.i.tudes, her expressions, the poise of her head, the curve of her full throat by heart at these times.

He did not care for music, and had no knowledge of the airs she played, but he knew that he had heard no playing like hers. The magic of her fingers made the instrument speak.

Thanking her now, he did not leave the room as usual, but lingered even after the children had said good-night and gone to bed. Alexia looked at him questioningly, and he began to speak--awkwardly, as she saw, but with how much reluctance she did not suspect.

"Mademoiselle, you will pardon my recalling it. But you recollect when you first expressed a wish to remain here?"

"Yes."

She spoke quite quietly, but her eyes involuntarily widened and her lips parted. She put her hand to her bosom, felt the stiffness of paper there, and then the hand fell at her side again, and she sat looking at the fire.

"You recollect," resumed George Brudenell, with a reluctant troubled glance at her averted face, "that I told you then how perfectly aware I was that the post you wished to fill was completely below your capabilities--that in it you would be thrown away, in short--and that at the best it could only be considered as an occupation for you until something better should offer?"

"I remember, sir."

The Doctor hesitated; that "sir," with its stiffness, its cool, formal, respect, jarred upon him more and more day by day; and she hardly ever failed to use it. He was too diffident to remonstrate with a few gay words, as a more confident, easy man would have done, and chafed under it in silence.

"I am happy to tell you that something has offered."

It was a lie, and he knew it; the thought of losing her, cold and statuesque as she was to him, made him miserable, filled his heart with a keen pain--a pain which had brought very near the inevitable revelation that he was bound to make to himself. Alexia raised her head and looked at him, but she did not speak. He went on:

"It is in the family of one of my patients--not as governess, but as companion to his wife. They are wealthy, and she is a refined, cultivated, and kindhearted woman; you could, I think, hardly fail to be comfortable with her, if you care to accept the post." He paused again, but finding her still silent, went on. "That you would be upon terms of perfect equality I need not say. This lady--Mrs. Latimer-- would like to see you, if you care to think further of it."

Alexia looked into his face with her great sombre eyes.

"Sir, do you then wish me to leave here?"

"Wish?" he echoed.

Was there really a sorrowful, almost reproachful, intonation in her voice? He was foolish enough to fancy so, weak enough to encourage this sudden rapid beating of his heart.

"Because, if not," she went on gently, "I would rather stay here, if I may."

"Mademoiselle, are you sure of that? Consider."

"Quite sure. I am comfortable--here it is home; you have been so kind to me! Ah, sir, do not send me away!" She spoke entreatingly, eagerly, and to herself she added, pressing her hands again upon her breast, "If he sends me from the house, I am lost."

"My child," said George Brudenell simply, again remembering only how young she was as he spoke to her thus protectingly, "stay if you wish, and as long as you wish. You shall leave only when you yourself desire it."

"I shall not do that," murmured Alexia softly; and then, having no further excuse for remaining, he went away.

The Doctor fell into a reverie before his study fire presently, and forgot the book upon his knee. He had the pleasant consciousness of an uncongenial task conscientiously performed, and without its antic.i.p.ated unwelcome results being left behind. It was not an idea of his own which had caused him to inquire among his patients for a suitable situation for Alexia Boucheafen, but the hints, and then downright urgings, of his friend Mrs. Leslie. Both she and Kate Merritt had seen the governess, for in her kindness of heart the elder lady had paid more than one visit to Laura's children. Mrs. Leslie had been astonished at Alexia's beauty and stateliness, sympathetic and questioning over her story, and, upon hearing that she was to remain in the Doctor's house, had been amazed. A conventional-minded woman, with all her kindness of heart, Mrs. Leslie had been shocked. Perhaps she might not have been so had there been no scandalized and indignant influence upon her own side; but Kate had been excessively voluble upon this incipient fulfillment of her predictions, and had let her sister have very little peace indeed. Finally, Mrs. Leslie had summed up the whole case to the Doctor by a.s.suring him that it would never do.

Well, it would have to do, he decided, when he roused himself sufficiently to know what he had been thinking about. The girl should stay if she preferred it, that was certain, in spite of all the opinions in Christendom. He rather enjoyed this outrage upon the proprieties, forgetful altogether that the same thought had been in his own mind. He was glad to know that she was tranquil and safe. Nothing more, consciously, yet.

CHAPTER V.

"Ma'm'selle, didn't you say we could go to the park again, if we were good?" said Tom, looking up from a smeary attempt to get a simple addition sum "to prove," and sucking his pencil doubtfully as he surveyed the result.

"Don't want to go to the park; want to go to the shops an' spend my shilling," exclaimed Floss, dropping a prodigious blot upon his copy of capital "B's," and instantly smearing it over the page with his arm.

"S'all go to the park, I s'all! Wants to see the ducks, pour fings, an'

the nice man," cried Maggie, as usual completing the trio, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her face over the mysteries of "a, b, ab."

"Can't we go, Ma'm'selle?" demanded Tom.

"Go where?" asked Alexia. She had been leaning against the window-frame, staring out blankly. Her face was paler than usual, the lines of the mouth more rigid, her hair even more coldly absent and abstracted. Her pupils had spoken to her half a dozen times, and she had not heard them, would not have heard them now, had not Tom tugged impatiently at her gown.

"Why, to the park, as we did last week? Can't we go?"

"I don't know; we will see. Get on with your lessons now. What is that?

Come in."

A tap had sounded at the door, which was now opened, and the Doctor entered. The children scrambled down from their seats and ran to him.

Miss Boucheafen, turning from the window, arched her straight brows with an expression of questioning surprise. For Doctor Brudenell to appear in the school-room at that hour in the morning was an unprecedented event.

"Good-morning, Mademoiselle." He took the cold, carelessly-yielded hand into his own for a moment. "Don't let me disturb you. I simply came up to express my hope that you were not alarmed last night."

"Alarmed?" echoed Alexia.

"Then you did not hear it?"--with a look of mingled relief and astonishment. "Well, I am glad of it. But you must sleep very soundly.

You were the only person in the house who was not aroused."

"I sleep very soundly." She looked at him keenly, noting that his face was drawn and that his eyes were dull, showing that he had not slept.

"I did not know there was anything wrong. Not here, I hope?"

"No, not here exactly; but it is a most horrible thing." He drew a pace nearer to her, dropping his voice so that the sharp little ears that were all eagerly listening should not catch the words. "A most horrible thing. A murder, Mademoiselle!"

"A murder?" repeated Alexia.

"Nothing less; and not a hundred yards away from this door."

Miss Boucheafen had leaned back, almost fallen, against the window-frame. She was so pale that he said hastily:

"I beg your pardon--I spoke too abruptly. I have frightened you."

"No, no; I am not frightened. Go on, pray! How was it? Who was it?"