being ill, and nobody heeded her) as Miss Sharp sang. The
Captain had written her notes (the best that the great blundering
dragoon could devise and spell; but dulness gets on as well as any
other quality with women). But when he put the first of the notes into
the leaves of the song she was singing, the little governess, rising
and looking him steadily in the face, took up the triangular missive
daintily, and waved it about as if it were a cocked hat, and she,
advancing to the enemy, popped the note into the fire, and made him a
very low curtsey, and went back to her place, and began to sing away
again more merrily than ever.

"What's that?" said Miss Crawley, interrupted in her after-dinner doze
by the stoppage of the music.

"It's a false note," Miss Sharp said with a laugh; and Rawdon Crawley
fumed with rage and mortification.

Seeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for the new governess,
how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not to be jealous, and to welcome
the young lady to the Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon Crawley,
her husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents! They became very
fond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley and her nephew. He gave up
hunting; he declined entertainments at Fuddleston: he would not dine
with the mess of the depot at Mudbury: his great pleasure was to stroll
over to Crawley parsonage--whither Miss Crawley came too; and as their
mamma was ill, why not the children with Miss Sharp? So the children
(little dears!) came with Miss Sharp; and of an evening some of the
party would walk back together. Not Miss Crawley--she preferred her
carriage--but the walk over the Rectory fields, and in at the little
park wicket, and through the dark plantation, and up the checkered
avenue to Queen's Crawley, was charming in the moonlight to two such
lovers of the picturesque as the Captain and Miss Rebecca.

"O those stars, those stars!" Miss Rebecca would say, turning her
twinkling green eyes up towards them. "I feel myself almost a spirit
when I gaze upon them."

"O--ah--Gad--yes, so do I exactly, Miss Sharp," the other enthusiast
replied. "You don't mind my cigar, do you, Miss Sharp?" Miss Sharp
loved the smell of a cigar out of doors beyond everything in the
world--and she just tasted one too, in the prettiest way possible, and
gave a little puff, and a little scream, and a little giggle, and
restored the delicacy to the Captain, who twirled his moustache, and
straigh