Nearer, the two parks were visible, with all their wealth of huge old trees and matchless turf, browsed by hereditary deer, that couched contentedly amid the tall fern that had screened the antlered herds for centuries past, and the red roof and gleaming vanes of stately Carbery, and the peaceful waters of its ornamental lake, in which the silver-white swans that floated there were imaged back as from the polished surface of a mirror. It was a pretty room this, wherein Miss Grainger, its last occupant, had passed perhaps the happiest years of her governess-life; and now it had received a new tenant in the person of Ethel Gray. A new tenant, but for how long? That was a question which Ethel asked herself, without being able to give a satisfactory answer to her own query. The school-house of High Tor, with the modest dwelling of its mistress, lay in ugly heaps of blackened ruin; and it must be long before the little flock of scholars could again be gathered together in any building large enough to hold them, and longer before the village instructress could have a home to replace that which the fire had made desolate. There were at the best of times no lodgings in High Tor fit for the abode of an educated girl such as Ethel, and now every house that remained unharmed was overcrowded by the burned-out inhabitants of those which the conflagration had swept away.
It so chanced, however, that on the very day following Ethel’s arrival the question as to the prolongation of her sojourn at High Tor House was conclusively settled. Lady Alice, a quick-witted impulsive child, came swiftly down-stairs to the room where her mother and sisters were sitting. ‘Pray, come, Maud!’ she said breathlessly; ‘Gladys, you come too; and you, mamma. It’s worth while, indeed it is, only to listen for a moment!’
‘What is to be listened to?’ asked the Countess, amused at the eager manner of her youngest child.
‘Miss Gray’s singing, her wonderful, wonderful singing!’ returned the child impetuously. ‘I heard it by accident as I passed the door of the school-room, where she is all alone at the piano; and I could hardly tear myself away that I might tell you not to lose the treat.’
‘All Alice’s geese are swans,’ she said; ‘and I am too old to climb so many stairs on the strength of this young lady’s recommendation. You are young, Maud, yourself, and I see you cannot resist the temptation; nor you either, Gladys.’