I lay in bed and looked about my room in which the furniture showed up in intermittent moonlight like dim figures. I had a feeling that I was not alone; that there were whispering voices about me. I had an impression that there had been tragedy in this house which still hung over it.

I wondered if it was due to the death of Alvean’s mother. She had been dead only a year; I wondered in what circumstances she had died.

I thought of Alvean who showed a somewhat aggressive face to the world. There must be some reason for this. I was sure that no child would be eager to proclaim herself the enemy of strangers without some cause.

I determined to discover the reason for Alvean’s demeanour. I determined to make her a happy, normal child.

It was light before sleep came; the coming of day comforted me because I was afraid of the darkness in this house. It was childish, but it was true.

I had breakfast in the schoolroom with Alvean, who told me, with pride, that when her father was at home she had breakfast with him.

Later we settled to work, and I discovered that she was an intelligent child; she had read more than most children of her age and her eyes would light up with interest in her lessons almost in spite of her determination to preserve a lack of harmony between us. My spirits began to rise and I felt that I would in time make a success of this job.

Luncheon consisted of boiled fish and rice pudding, and afterwards when Alvean volunteered to take me for a walk, I felt I was getting on better with her.

There were woods on the estate, and she said she wished to show them to me. I was delighted that she should do so and gladly I followed her through the trees.

” Look,” she cried, picking a crimson flower and holding it out to me.

” Do you know what this is?”

” It’s betony, I believe.”

She nodded. ” You should pick some and keep it in your room, Miss. It keeps evil away.”

I laughed. ” That’s an old superstition. Why should I want to keep evil away?”

” Bverybody should. They grow this in graveyards. It’s because people are buried there. It’s grown there because people are afraid of the dead.”

” It’s foolish to be afraid. Dead people can hurt no one.”

She was placing the flower in the buttonhole of my coat. I was rather touched. Her face looked gentle as she fixed it and I had a notion that she felt a sudden protective feeling towards me.

” Thank you, Alvean,” I said gently.

She looked at me and all the softness vanished from her face. It was defiant and full of mischief.

” You can’t catch me,” she cried; and oS she ran.

I did not attempt to do so. I called: ” Alvean, come here.” But she disappeared through the trees and I heard her mocking laugher in the distance.

I dedded to return to the house, but the wood was thick, and I was not sure of my direction. I walked back a little way but it seemed to me that it was not the direction from which we had come. A panic seized me, but I told myself this was absurd. It was a sunny afternoon and I could not be half an hour’s walk from the house. Moreover, I did not believe that the wood could be very extensive.

I was not going to give Alvean the satisfaction of having brought me to the wood to lose me. So I walked purposefully through the trees; but as I walked they grew thicker and I knew that we had not come this way. My anger against Alvean was rising when I heard the crackle of leaves as though I were being followed. I was sure the child was somewhere near, mocking me.

Then I heard singing; it was a strange voice, slightly off key, and the fact that the song was one of those which were being sung in drawing rooms all over the country did nothing to reassure me.

“Alice, where art thou? One year back this even And thou wert by my side, Vowing to love me, Alice, what e’er may betide”

” Who is there?” I called.

There was no answer, but in the distance I caught a glimpse of a child with lint-white hair, and I knew that it was only little Gilly who had stared at me from the hydrangea bushes by the lodge gates.

I walked swiftly on and after a while the trees grew less dense and through them I saw the road. I came out into this and realised that I was on the slope which led up to the plateau and the lodge gates.

Mrs. Soady was sitting at the door of the lodge as she had been when I arrived, her knitting in her hands.

” Why, Miss,” she called. ” So you’ve been out walking then?”

” I went for a walk with Miss Alvean. We lost each other in the woods.”

” Ah yes. So her run away, did her.” Mrs. Soady shook her head, as she came to the gate trailing her ball of wool behind her.

” I expect she’ll find her way home,” I said.

” My dear life, yes. There ain’t an inch of them woods Miss Alvean don’t know. Oh, I see you’ve got yourself a piece of betony. Like as not ‘tis as well.”

” Miss Alvean picked it and insisted on putting it in my buttonhole.”

” There now! You be friends already.”

” I heard the little girl, Gilly, singing in the woods,” I said.

” I don’t doubtee. Her’s always singing in the woods.”

” I called to her but she didn’t come.”

” Timid as a doe, she be.”

” Well, I think I’ll be getting along. Goodbye, Mrs. Soady.”

” Good day to ‘ee. Miss.”

I went up the drive, past the hydrangeas and the fuchsias. I realised I was straining my ears for the sound of singing, but there was no sound but that of an occasional small animal in the undergrowth.

I was hot and tired when I reached the house. I went straight up to my room and rang for water and, when I had washed and brushed my hair, went into the schoolroom where tea was waiting for me.

Alvean was at the table; she looked demure and made no reference to our afternoon’s adventure; nor did I. After tea I said to her: ” I don’t know what rules your other governesses made, but I propose we do our lessons in the morning, have a break between luncheon and tea, and then start again from five o’clock until six, when we will read together.”

Alvean did not answer; she was studying me intently.

Then suddenly she said: ” Miss, do you like my name? Have you ever known anyone else called Alvean?”

I said I liked the name and had never heard it before.

” It’s Cornish. Do you know what it means?”

” I have no idea.”

” Then I will tell you. My father can speak and write Cornish.” She looked wistful when she spoke of her father, and I thought: He at least is one person she admires and for whose approval she is eager.

She went on: ” In Cornish, Alvean means Little Alice.”

” Oh!” I said, and my voice shook a little.

She came to me and placed her hands on my knees; she looked up into my face and said solemnly: ” You see. Miss, my mother was Alice. She isn’t here any more. But I was called after her. That’s why I am little Alice.”

I stood up because I could no longer bear the scrutiny of the child. I went to the window.

” Look,” I said, ” two of the peacocks are on the lawn.”

She was standing at my elbow. ” They’ve come to be fed. Greedy things!

Daisy will soon be coming with their peas. They know it. “

I was not seeing the peacocks on the lawn. I was remembering the mocking eyes of the man on the train, the man who had warned me that I should have to beware of Alice.

Three days after my arrival at Mount Mellyn, the Master of j the house returned. | I had slipped into a routine as far as my duties were conI cerned.

Alvean and I did lessons each morning after breakfast, I and apart from an ever present desire to disconcert me by | asking questions which, I knew, she hoped I should not be able | to answer, I found her a good pupil. It was not that she meant :

to please me; it was merely that her desire for knowledge was :

so acute that she could not deny it. I believe that there was :

some plot in her head that if she could learn all I knew she could then confront her father with a question : Since there is no more Miss can teach me, is there any point in her remaining here?

I often thought of tales I had heard of governesses whose declining years were made happy by those whom they had taught as children. No such happy fate would be mine—at least as far as Alvean was concerned.

I had been shocked when I first heard the name of Alice mentioned, and after the daylight had passed I would consequently feel that the house was full of eerie shadows. That was pure fancy of course. It had been a bad beginning, meeting that man in the train and his talk of second sight.

I did wonder, when I was alone in my room and the house was quiet, of what Alice had died. She must have been quite a young woman. It was, I told myself, because she was so recently dead—for after all a year was not a very long time-that her presence seemed to haunt the place.

I would wake in the night to hear what I thought were voices, and they seemed to be moaning: ” Alice. Alice. Where is Alice?”

I went to my window and listened, and the whispering voices seemed to be carried on the air.

Daisy who, like her sister, was by no means a fanciful person,

explained away my fancies the very next morning when she brought my hot water.

” Did ‘ee hear the sea last night, Miss, in old Mellyn Cove? Sis ..

sis . sis . woa . woa . woa . all night long. Just like two old biddies having a good gossip down there. “

” Why, yes, I heard it.”

” Tis like that on certain nights when the sea be high and the wind in a certain direction.”

I laughed at myself. There was an explanation to everything.

I had grown to know the people of the household. Mrs. Tapperty called me in one day for a glass of her parsnip wine. She hoped I was comfortable at the house; then she told me of the trial Tapperty was to her because he couldn’t keep his eyes nor his hands from the maidens and the younger the better. She feared Kitty and Daisy took after their father. It was a pity for their mother was, according to herself, a Godfearing body who would be seen in Mellyn Church every Sunday, night and morning. Now the girls were grown up she had not only to wonder whether Joe Tapperty was after Mrs. Tully from the cottages, but what Daisy was doing in the stables with Billy Trehay or Kitty with that house boy from Mount Widden. It was a hard life for a Godfearing woman who only wanted to do right and see right done.

I went to see Mrs. Soady at the lodge gates and heard about her three sons and their children. ” Never did I see such people for putting their toes through their stockings. It’s one body’s work to keep them in stockings.”

I was very eager to learn about the house in which I lived, and the intricacies of heel-turning did not greatly excite me; therefore I did not often call on Mrs. Soady.

I tried on occasions to catch Gilly and talk to her; but although I saw her now and then, I did not succeed. I called her, but that only made her run away more swiftly. I could never hear her soft crooning voice without being deeply disturbed.

I felt that something should be done for her. I was angry with these country folk who, because she was unlike they were, believed her to be mad. I wanted to talk to Gilly if that were possible. I wanted to find out what went on behind that blank blue stare.

I knew she was interested in me, and I believed that in some way she had sensed my interest in her. But she was afraid of me. Something must have happened to frighten her at some time, because she was so unnaturally timid. If I could only discover what, if I could teach her that in me at least she had nothing to fear, I believed I could help her to become a normal child.

During those days I believe I thought more of Gilly than I did of Alvean. The latter seemed to me to be merely a naughty spoilt child; there were thousands such. I felt that the gentle creature called Gillyflower was unique.

It was impossible to talk to Mrs. Polgrey about her granddaughter, for she was such a conventional woman. In her mind a person was either mad or sane, and the degree of sanity depended on the conformity with Mrs. Polgrey’s own character. As Gilly was as different from her grandmother as anyone could be, Gilly was therefore irremediably crazy.

So although I did broach the subject with Mrs. Polgrey she was grimly uncommunicative and told me by her looks alone to remember that I was here to take charge of Miss Alvean, and that Gilly was no concern of mine.