lighted, I'm sure, Mr. Le Frank."

"And was Mrs. Gallilee pleased with the Concert?"

"Charmed."

Mr. Le Frank shook his head. "I am afraid there was a drawback,"
he suggested. "You forget the lady who fainted. So alarming to the
audience. So disagreeable to the artists."

"Take care, Mr. Le Frank! These new houses are flimsily built; they
might hear you upstairs. The fainting lady is upstairs. All the elements
of a romance are upstairs. Is your tea to your liking?"

In this playfully provocative manner, Miss Minerva (the governess)
trifled with the curiosity of Mr. Le Frank (the music-master), as the
proverbial cat trifles with the terror of the captive mouse. The man
of the bald head and the servile smile showed a polite interest in the
coming disclosure; he opened his deeply-sunk eyes, and lazily lifted his
delicate eyebrows.

He had called at Mrs. Gallilee's house, after the concert, to get
a little tea (with a large infusion of praise) in the schoolroom. A
striking personal contrast confronted him, in the face of the lady who
was dispensing the hospitalities of the table. Mr. Le Frank's plump
cheeks were, in colour, of the obtrusively florid sort. The relics of
yellow hair, still adhering to the sides of his head, looked as silkily
frail as spun glass. His noble beard made amends for his untimely
baldness. The glossy glory of it exhaled delicious perfumes; the keenest
eyes might have tried in vain to discover a hair that was out of place.
Miss Minerva's eager sallow face, so lean, and so hard, and so long,
looked, by contrast, as if it wanted some sort of discreet covering
thrown over some part of it. Her coarse black hair projected like a
penthouse over her bushy black eyebrows and her keen black eyes.
Oh, dear me (as they said in the servants' hall), she would never be
married--so yellow and so learned, so ugly and so poor! And yet, if
mystery is interesting, this was an interesting woman. The people about
her felt an uneasy perception of something secret, ominously secret,
in the nature of the governess which defied detection. If Inquisitive
Science, vowed to medical research, could dissect firmness of will,
working at its steadiest repressive action--then, the mystery of Miss
Minerva's inner nature might possibly have been revealed. As it was,
nothing more remarkable exposed itself to view than an irritable temper;
serving perhaps as safety-valve to an underlying explosive force, which
(with strong enoug