test impropriety of
word, look, or action, on either side. Stealthy watching and listening
at the governess's bedroom door detected that she kept a light in her
room at late hours of the night, and that she groaned and ground her
teeth in her sleep--and detected nothing more. Careful superintendence
in the day-time proved that she regularly posted her own letters,
instead of giving them to the servant; and that on certain occasions,
when the occupation of her hours out of lesson time and walking time was
left at her own disposal, she had been suddenly missed from the garden,
and then caught coming back alone to it from the park. Once and once
only, the nurse had found an opportunity of following her out of the
garden, had been detected immediately in the park, and had been asked
with the most exasperating politeness if she wished to join Miss Gwilt
in a walk. Small circumstances of this kind, which were sufficiently
suspicious to the mind of a jealous woman, were discovered in abundance.
But circumstances, on which to found a valid ground of complaint that
might be laid before the major, proved to be utterly wanting. Day
followed day, and Miss Gwilt remained persistently correct in her
conduct, and persistently irreproachable in her relations toward her
employer and her pupil.

Foiled in this direction, Mrs. Milroy tried next to find an assailable
place in the statement which the governess's reference had made on the
subject of the governess's character.

Obtaining from the major the minutely careful report which his mother
had addressed to him on this topic, Mrs. Milroy read and reread it, and
failed to find the weak point of which she was in search in any part
of the letter. All the customary questions on such occasions had been
asked, and all had been scrupulously and plainly answered. The one sole
opening for an attack which it was possible to discover was an opening
which showed itself, after more practical matters had been all disposed
of, in the closing sentences of the letter.

"I was so struck," the passage ran, "by the grace and distinction of
Miss Gwilt's manners that I took an opportunity, when she was out of the
room, of asking how she first came to be governess. 'In the usual way,'
I was told. 'A sad family misfortune, in which she behaved nobly. She
is a very sensitive person, and shrinks from speaking of it among
strangers--a natural reluctance which I have always felt it a matter of
delicacy to respe