tion lasted but a moment, then she spoke. "Your ladyship is
very kind, but I require no time for consideration," she said. "I have
already made up my mind to take the position which you have so
generously offered me; and if my ability to please you only prove equal
to my inclination, you will not have much cause to complain."

A faint smile of something like satisfaction flitted across Lady
Chillington's face. "Very good, Miss Hope," she said, in a more gracious
tone than she had yet used. "I am pleased to find that you have taken so
sensible a view of the matter, and that you understand so thoroughly
your position under my roof. How soon shall you be prepared to begin
your new duties?"

"I am ready at this moment."

"Come to me an hour hence, and I will then instruct you."

In this second interview, brief though it was, Janet could not avoid
being struck by Lady Chillington's stately dignity of manner. Her tone
and style were those of a high-bred gentlewoman. It seemed scarcely
possible that she and the querulous, shrivelled-up old woman in the
cashmere dressing-robe could be one and the same individual.

Unhappily, as Janet to her cost was not long in finding out, her
ladyship's querulous moods were much more frequent than her moods of
quiet dignity. At such times she was very difficult to please;
sometimes, indeed, it was utterly impossible to please her: not even an
angel could have done it. Then, indeed, Janet felt her duty weigh very
hardly upon her. By nature her temper was quick and passionate--her
impulses high and generous; but when Lady Chillington was in her worse
moods, she had to curb the former as with an iron chain; while the
latter were outraged continually by Lady Chillington's mean and miserly
mode of life, and by a certain low and sordid tone of thought which at
such times pervaded all she said and did. And yet, strange to say, she
had rare fits of generosity and goodwill--times when her soul seemed to
sit in sackcloth and ashes, as if in repentance for those other
occasions when the "dark fit" was on her, and the things of this world
claimed her too entirely as their own.

After her second interview with Lady Chillington, Janet at once hurried
off to Sister Agnes to tell her the news. "On one point only, so far as
I see at present, shall I require any special information," she said. "I
shall need to know exactly the mode of procedure necessary to be
observed when I pay my midnight visits to Si