r, she would have fits of boisterous hilarity, not
quite natural, with a strange note half pathetic, half jeering. Her
father tended to a supercilious, sneering tone. In Vina it came out
in mad bursts of hilarious jeering. This made Miss Frost uneasy. She
would watch the girl's strange face, that could take on a gargoyle
look. She would see the eyes rolling strangely under sardonic
eyelids, and then Miss Frost would feel that never, never had she
known anything so utterly alien and incomprehensible and
unsympathetic as her own beloved Vina. For twenty years the strong,
protective governess reared and tended her lamb, her dove, only to
see the lamb open a wolf's mouth, to hear the dove utter the wild
cackle of a daw or a magpie, a strange sound of derision. At such
times Miss Frost's heart went cold within her. She dared not
realize. And she chid and checked her ward, restored her to the
usual impulsive, affectionate demureness. Then she dismissed the
whole matter. It was just an accidental aberration on the girl's
part from her own true nature. Miss Frost taught Alvina thoroughly
the qualities of her own true nature, and Alvina believed what she
was taught. She remained for twenty years the demure, refined
creature of her governess' desire. But there was an odd, derisive
look at the back of her eyes, a look of old knowledge and
deliberate derision. She herself was unconscious of it. But it was
there. And this it was, perhaps, that scared away the young men.

Alvina reached the age of twenty-three, and it looked as if she were
destined to join the ranks of the old maids, so many of whom found
cold comfort in the Chapel. For she had no suitors. True there were
extraordinarily few young men of her class--for whatever her
condition, she had certain breeding and inherent culture--in
Woodhouse. The young men of the same social standing as herself were
in some curious way outsiders to her. Knowing nothing, yet her
ancient sapience went deep, deeper than Woodhouse could fathom. The
young men did not like her for it. They did not like the tilt of her
eyelids.

Miss Frost, with anxious foreseeing, persuaded the girl to take over
some pupils, to teach them the piano. The work was distasteful to
Alvina. She was not a good teacher. She persevered in an off-hand
way, somewhat indifferent, albeit dutiful.

When she was twenty-three years old, Alvina met a man called Graham.
He was an Australian, who had been in Edinburgh taking hi