As I was standing there I heard the carriage drive up. I waited, listening. I heard my father’s voice as he shouted to the grooms. Then there was silence. They must have gone into the house.

I was pensive, suddenly overcome by the contemplation of change. It would be inevitable. Christabel Connalt would be very erudite, strict, no doubt, and determined to make a scholar of me. Emily Philpots had never achieved that. Looking back, I realized that she was rather ineffectual and with the cunning of children, Carl and I had known it, for before Carl went off to the rectory for tuition, she had taught him too. We had plagued poor Emily sorely. Carl had once put a spider on her skirt and then shrieked at her. He had then removed it with a show of gallantry for which I reprimanded him afterwards, telling him that the incident showed he had a deceitful nature. Carl had folded his palms together and looked heavenwards, and in a fair imitation of Jasper had declared he had done what he did for old Philpots’ sake.

I had built up a picture of Christabel Connalt in my mind. Brought up in a vicarage, she would be religious of course, and more censorious of the customs and manners which prevailed in the country even, than Emily Philpots. She would be middle-aged, verging on elderly, with greying hair and steely eyes which missed nothing.

I shivered and was sure I should look back nostalgically on the weak rule of Emily Philpots.

She and Sally Nullens had talked continuously of the newcomer. When I went into Sally’s sitting room, which Carl called “Nullens’s Parlour,” I was aware of an atmosphere of growing tension and mystery. The two women would sit over the fire, heads close together, whispering. I knew that Sally Nullens was a firm believer in witchcraft, and whenever anyone died or developed a mysterious illness always looked round for the ill-wisher. Carl used to say that she regretted that the days of the witch finders were over.

“Can’t you imagine old Sal going round examining the pretty maidens … just everywhere, for the marks of their lovers? They’re succubi or is it incubi for girls?”

Carl might have been the despair of the Reverend George Helling where Greek and Latin were concerned but he was very knowledgeable about the facts of life. Even though he was not yet ten years old, he had an eye for the young serving girls and he liked to speculate on who was doing what with whom.

Sally Nullens said: “He’s another like his father. Up to tricks before they’re out of swaddling.”

An exaggeration, of course, but it was true that Carl was progressing fast along the road to manhood—a fact which pleased my father and bore out Sally’s words that Carl was another such as he had been.

My thoughts were running on, propelled by the contemplation of the change Christabel Connalt would bring.

“The master seemed glad to bring her in,” I had heard Emily Philpots say to Sally when they were sitting together in Sally’s room—Sally mending and Emily doing some fine feather stitching on one of my mother’s petticoats.

As the remark was followed by a sniffing which I knew from the past meant an indication that there was something profound behind it, I had been guilty of listening. This was because it concerned my father, and about him I had this obsession to which I have already referred.

“And who is she, I should like to know?” went on Emily.

“Oh, he gave all that up. Mistress wouldn’t stand for it.”

“There’s some as never gives up. And it wouldn’t surprise me …”

“Walls,” said Sally portentously, “they have ears. Doors too. Is anyone there?”

I went in and said I had brought my riding skirt which I had torn the day before and would Sally mend it please?

She cast a significant look at Emily and took the skirt.

“Nice and muddy too,” she commented. “I’ll give it a sponge. It’s one body’s work looking after you, Mistress Priscilla.”

It was sad in a way. It made me want to comfort her. She was always stressing how useful she was and demanding to know how we should get along without her. Now Emily Philpots would be the same. I knew they were both preparing to dislike the newcomer.

I gazed at the roses, valiantly clinging to life although their season was over; and they reminded me of those two aging women.

I looked towards the house and saw it afresh. Eversleigh Court, the family home. It really belonged to Edwin, although my father managed the estate and everything would collapse without him. He was a proud man. I wondered whether he resented Edwin. Edwin had everything—the title and the estate, and it would have been so much more suitable if my father had had it because he was the one who had saved it during the Civil War by posing as a Cromwellian and fooling everyone, just that he might keep the estate in order. Edwin had not been born then. My mother called him the Restoration Baby. His birthday was January of the year 1660, so his arrival into the world was only a few months before the King’s return.

It was a gracious old house and, as such houses always do, gained with the years. So many generations of Eversleighs had added to it; tragedies and comedies had been played out here; and Sally Nullens said that those who could find no rest came back to wander about their homes unseen, but their presence was known to the discerning … like Sally Nullens.

There were many houses like it in the country. It was the big house of the neighbourhood built in the days of Elizabeth with the traditional E type of plan in homage to Gloriana. East wing, west wing, and centre; hall that was as high as the house with vaulted ceiling and broad oak beams. Some of the rooms were elegantly panelled, but the hall was stone walled and hung with armoury to remind coming generations of the part Eversleighs had played in the country’s history. Over the great fireplace was the painting of the family tree which had to be added to now and then and would no doubt in time spread across the great hall. I was there—not in the main branch, of course. Edwin was on that, and when he married his children would be there right in the centre. Leigh used to get angry because he wasn’t on it. He could not understand in those days why he should be left out. I believe it had an effect on him and made him want to score over Edwin in every other way. I began to brood and came up with the idea that often what happened to us in childhood had its effect on the rest of our lives.

But I was only thinking lightly of these things as I stood by the haunted flowerbed, and I knew that I was putting off the moment when I should go and meet this woman who I knew instinctively was going to change my life.

Chastity came out to me, waddling slightly, for she was pregnant again.

“Mistress Priscilla, where be you then? They want you to meet the new governess. Your mother says to go to the drawing room at once.”

“All right, Chastity,” I said. “I’ll come.” I added: “You shouldn’t run, you know. You ought to consider your condition.”

“Oh, ’tis all so natural, mistress.”

I calculated this would be her sixth and she was young yet. I reckoned she had time for at least another ten.

“You’re like a queen bee, Chastity,” I said reproachfully.

“What’s that, mistress?”

I didn’t explain. I thought how provoking fate was to give Chastity one child every year while my parents had only Carl and myself (not counting Edwin who was my mother’s alone). If they had had more, Sally Nullens wouldn’t be sniffing out witches all the time and Emily Philpots would be considered good enough for the young ones. Moreover, I should have been pleased with some little brothers and sisters.

“Have you seen her, Chastity?” I asked.

“Not as you might say, mistress. She was took to the drawing room. My mother sent me to find you. Said Mistress was asking for you.”

I went straight to the drawing room. She was there with my mother and father.

My mother said, “Ah, here is Priscilla. Come and meet Mistress Connalt, Priscilla.”

Christabel Connalt stood up and came towards me. She was tall, slim and very plainly dressed; but she was not without elegance, which I believed came naturally to her. She wore a cloak of a blue woolen material, which was caught at the throat with a buckle which might have been silver. I could see that the bodice beneath was of the same blue material; it was cut low but she wore a linen kerchief about her neck which added a touch of modesty to the bodice, which came to a deep point and was laced down the front with a silver-coloured cord. Her skirt, still of the same material, fell to the floor in folds. Attached to the cloak was a hood which had fallen back from her head, disclosing dark hair unfashionably unfrizzed and hanging in loose curls, which were tied back from her face.

But it was not her clothes which struck me—after all they were more or less what one would expect of a daughter of a parson whose stipend was so inadequate that his daughter must earn a living in this way. Neat not gaudy, I commented inwardly. And then I looked at her face. She was not beautiful, but there was distinction about her. She was by no means as old as I had expected her to be. I guessed she was in her mid-twenties—old to me, of course, but as some would say, in the prime of life. Her face was oval in shape, her skin smooth and with the texture of a flower petal; her eyebrows were dark and well defined; her nose was a trifle large; her eyes were large, too, with short, thick dark lashes; her mouth was mobile, by which I mean it betrayed her feelings, I was to discover, far more than her eyes ever did. They would be quite impassive; the eyelids would not flicker but something happened to the mouth which she could not restrain.

I was too taken aback to speak because she was not in the least what I had expected.

“Your pupil, Mistress Connalt,” said my father. He was watching us with a certain twitching of his lips, which I had come to know meant an inner amusement which he was trying not to betray.

“I hope we shall work well together,” she said.

“I hope so, too.”

Her eyes were fixed on me. They betrayed nothing, but the lips moved a little. They tightened as though she did not exactly like what she saw. I told myself that I was allowing Sally Nullens and Emily Philpots to influence me.

“Mistress Connalt has been telling us something of her teaching programme,” said my mother. “It sounds very interesting. I think, Priscilla, you should show her her room. Then you might let her see the schoolroom. Mistress Connalt says that what she wants is to get down to work as soon as possible.”

“Would you like to see your room?” I asked.

She said she would, and I led her out of the room.

As we mounted the staircase, she said, “It’s a beautiful house. What a mercy it was not destroyed during the war.”

“My father worked hard to preserve it,” I replied.

“Ah!” It was a quick intake of breath. She was walking behind me and I could feel her eyes on me, which made me feel uncomfortable, and I was glad when we had mounted the staircase and could walk side by side.

“I gather your home is a rectory,” I said conversationally.

“Yes, it’s in Westering. Do you know Westering?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“It is in Sussex.”

“I hope you don’t find it bleak here. It is, they say in the southeast. We’re near the coast, too. We get the full force of the prevailing wind which is east.”

“It sounds like a geography lesson,” she said, and her voice had laughter in it.

I was pleased and I felt happier after that. I showed her her room, which was next to the schoolroom and not very large. Emily Philpots had occupied it, but she had been moved to a room on the floor above, next to Sally Nullens. My mother had said that the governess should be next to the schoolroom. It was another grievance for poor old Emily.

“I hope it is comfortable,” I said.

She turned to me and replied: “It’s luxurious compared with the rectory.” Her eyes went to the fire in the grate, which my mother had ordered should be lighted. “It was so cold in the rectory, I used to dread the winter.”

I thought then: I believe I’m going to like her.

I left her to unpack and wash, telling her that in an hour’s time I would come up and show her the schoolroom, where we could look at some of my books and I could explain to her what I had been doing. I would show her the house and gardens if she would care to see them.

She thanked me and she smiled at me rather shyly. “I think I am going to be very glad I came here,” she said.