ill-tempered-looking housemaid, with a
cap of obtrusive respectability and a spotless white apron. I
fancied that she looked just a little superciliously at my boxes,
which I daresay would not have contained her own wardrobe.

'O, it's the governess-pupil, I suppose?' she said. 'You was
expected early this afternoon, miss. Miss Bagshot and Miss Susan are
gone out to tea; but I can show you where you are to sleep, if
you'll please to step this way. Do you think you could carry one of
your trunks, if I carry the other?'

I thought I could; so the housemaid and I lugged them all the way
along the stone passage and up an uncarpeted back staircase which
led from the lobby into which the door at the end of the passage
opened. We went very high up, to the top story in fact, where the
housemaid led me into a long bare room with ten little beds in it. I
was well enough accustomed to the dreariness of a school dormitory,
but somehow this room looked unusually dismal.

There was a jet of gas burning at one end of the room, near a door
opening into a lavatory which was little more than a cupboard, but
in which ten young ladies had to perform their daily ablutions. Here
I washed my face and hands in icy-cold water, and arranged my hair
as well as I could without the aid of a looking-glass, that being a
luxury not provided at Albury Lodge. The servant stood watching me
as I made this brief toilet, waiting to conduct me to the
schoolroom. I followed her, shivering as I went, to a great empty
room on the first floor. The holidays were not quite over, and none
of the pupils had as yet returned. There was an almost painful
neatness and bareness in place of the usual litter of books and
papers, and I could not help thinking that an apartment in a
workhouse would have looked quite as cheerful. Even the fire behind
the high wire guard seemed to burn in a different manner from all
home fires: a fact which I attributed then to some sympathetic
property in the coal, but which I afterwards found to be caused by a
plentiful admixture of coke; a slow sulky smoke went up from the
dull mass of fuel, brightened ever so little now and then by a
sickly yellow flame. One jet of gas dimly lighted this long dreary
room, in which there was no human creature but myself and my guide.

'I'll bring you some supper presently, miss,' the housemaid said,
and departed before I could put in a timid plea for that feminine
luxury, a cup of tea.

I had not ex