"I could make a truer estimate," she continued, "if I drew out her horoscope. I go by that more than by my own fallible judgment. I may err, but I have never known astrology to fail."

Dulcie was duly engaged as governess on approval for three months, on the strength of her horoscope. Before she went to the Manor House I made a few remarks to her to which she listened decorously, her eyes reverently fixed on my face.

"You will leave with me that remarkably pretty lilac muslin you appeared in yesterday--and the sun-bonnet. You will make yourself look as like a district visitor as possible, thick where you ought to be thin, and thin where you ought to be thick. Don't cry, Dulcie. I am endeavouring to help you. Be thankful you have an aunt like me. Who educated you?"

"You did." Sob. Sob.

"Well, now I am finishing your education. You want to earn your living, I suppose. You know that I only have a small annuity, that I have not a farthing to leave you."

"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne."

"Well, then, don't look prettier than that square Joan, and don't let the wave in your hair show."

The Alderney calf eyes brimmed anew with tears. Dulcie drooped her pin of a head. Like that defunct noodle, her mother, she lived solely for clothes and poetry and the admiration of the uncorseted s.e.x. She had come into the world a little late. She conformed to the best Victorian ideals, but there are men still lurking in secluded rural districts if one could but find them, to whom her cheap appeal might be irresistible.

I had hopes she might secure a husband if she took a country engagement.

I proceeded with my discourse. It spread over Jimmy as well. I did not bid her pure eyes look into depths of depravity but I did make her understand that Mrs. Cross was becoming rather stout and middle-aged, and that if Mr. Cross blew soap bubbles in the schoolroom too frequently, she, Dulcie, might find that her French accent was not good enough for her young charges.

Dulcie has not the faintest gleam of humour, but she is docility itself.

She appeared next day staid, flat-figured, almost unpretty, her wonderful hair smoothed closely over her small ears.

I blessed her, and said as a parting word:

"Take an interest in astrology."

And then the gardener wheeled her luggage on the barrow to the Manor, and Dulcie crept timidly behind it to her first situation.

In order that this tragic story, for it is a tragedy, should not expand into a novel, I will say at once that she was a complete success. That was because she did exactly as I told her. As a rule, very silly people never will do what they are told. But in that one point Dulcie was no fool.

She was lamentably weak with the children. She had no art of teaching.

She did not encourage Joan to preserve a burnished mind, but she took to astrology like a duck to water. From the first she was deeply interested in it, and believed in it with flawless credulity.

"Dulcie," said Gertrude with approval, "has a very alert mind for one so young. Joan has never taken the faintest interest in astrology, but Dulcie shows an intelligent grasp of the subject. She studies it while the children are preparing their syntax. You, yourself, Anne, have never in all these years mastered even the elements of the science. I don't believe you know what _an aspect_ means."

"I don't pretend to a powerful mind."

"Your difficulty is the inertia that belongs to a low vitality," said Gertrude, "and I rather think that is what is the matter with Joan. She hardly opens a book. She has not an idea beyond her chickens. She spends hours among her coops."

"Dulcie's horoscope," continued Gertrude after a pause, "shows a marked expansion in her immediate future. The wider life which she has entered upon under our roof is no doubt the beginning of it. I feel it my duty to help her in every way I can."

"Dear Gertrude," I said. "_Thank you._ My poor motherless child, for whom I can do but little has found a powerful friend in you."

Conscience jabbed me as with a knitting needle, but I paid no more attention to it than the Spartan boy to his fox.

"There is certainly a love affair in her near future," continued Gertrude affably. "_She_ says that astrologically she can't see any such thing for several years to come, but I know better. I found him under Ura.n.u.s, transiting her Venus. She is an extremely intelligent pupil, but she is certainly obstinate. She _won't_ see it. But she can see Joan's engagement and marriage quite clearly. We both see that. But I am convinced Dulcie has an opportunity of marrying as well as Joan. Her moon will shortly be going through the fifth house, the house of lovers which speaks for itself. I wondered whether it might possibly be Mr.

Wilson. Most respectable--you know--Mr. Benson's pupil. He's always coming over on one pretext or another, to play tennis or see Joan's chickens. I saw him walking back through the park with Dulcie and the children the other day."

I pretended to be horrified.

"I will speak to her," I mumbled, "most reprehensible."

"I beg you will do nothing of the kind," said Gertrude with asperity.

"The world moves on, my dear Anne, while you sit dreaming in your cottage; and if you can't raise a finger to help your own niece then don't try to nullify the benevolent activities of those who can."

"Of course, Gertrude, if you look at it in that way. But a governess!"

"I do look at it in that way; and allow me to tell you, Anne, that you dress her abominably, and I have advised her to revolt. And her hair! I spoke to her about it yesterday, and she said you liked her to plaster it down like that. The child has beautiful hair, very like mine at her age. It needs releasing. It is not necessary that she should imitate your severe coiffure."

"Oh! Gertrude, I always brush my own hair back, and surely it is not too much to ask of my brother's only child who owes everything to me to--" I became tearful.

"It _is_ too much to ask. You are an egoist, Anne. The poor child looked quite frightened when I spoke to her yesterday. You mean well, but you have repressed her. I intend, on the contrary, to draw her out, to widen her narrowed, pinched existence." Gertrude had said the same of Jimmy when she married him. Everyone had a pinched existence till she dawned on them, though it would have been difficult to say who had dared to pinch Jimmy.

Next day Dulcie came down half frightened, wholly delighted, to confer with me.

"My dear," I said. "Do exactly what kind Mrs. Cross wishes about your hair and dress and general deportment. I can't explain, it would take too long, and when I had explained you would not understand. You may now take back with you the lilac gown and the sun-bonnet. And, by the way, what is this Mr. Wilson like who is always coming over?"

"Very, _very_ nice"--with fervour.

"And handsome?"

"Very, _very_ handsome."

"H'm! Now, Dulcie, no nonsense such as you ladled out to me about Herr Muller, the music master at Dresden. You needn't cry. That is all past and forgotten. But I want a plain answer. Does this very handsome man care about chickens?"

"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne. He has taken several prizes."

"Does he come to see you, or Joan?"

Dulcie cogitated.

"At first it was Joan," she said.

Light broke in on me. _That serpent Gertrude!_ She did not think the poultry fancier good enough for the stolid Joan, but quite good enough for my exquisite Dulcibella.

"I must go back now," said Dulcie. "I'm dining down because Mr. Cross likes a game of patience in the evening. It keeps him from falling asleep. Mr. Wilson is staying to dinner. I'm going to wear my amber muslin, and Mr. Vavasour is coming to stay. We've seen a good deal of him lately. Mrs. Cross says he has had a very overshadowed life with his old mother, and she wants to help him to a wider sphere."

I p.r.i.c.ked up my ears.

"Is he Vavasour, of Harlington?"

"Yes, that's his home, near Lee on the Solent."

"But surely he is quite an infant."

"I don't know what you mean by an infant, Aunt Anne. He is two years older than me, and he simply _loves_ poetry."