The Story of a Governess

Janet Summerhayes did not start in life with the feelings usually attributed to the young governess when beginning what is certainly a very thankless trade, with about as little...

The household at the vicarage was astir earlier than usual next morning, which was altogether unnecessary, for Jane did not leave Clover till after twelve o’clock; but that was...

It was between three and four in the afternoon when Janet arrived at her destination. She knew London well enough as country young ladies know it--the parks and Belgravia, Picca...

She was a tall girl, taller than Janet, but considerably less so than her sister, with a well-knit and active figure, clad in the shapeless garments which are considered appropr...

It is one of the most curious sensations of modern life to find one’s self engulfed in a new family, wrapped round and round by novel circumstances, made, momentarily, to feel a...

Janet had as pretty a little temper of her own as you could meet anywhere. It flashed up in a moment into her eyes. No one, schoolgirl or otherwise, was likely to get a cheap ba...

“Well,” said Janet, when she found herself looking into the blurred and flushed countenance of the passionate girl. Julia had given vent, in spite of herself, to some tears, and...

Janet found after this experience was over that she had perhaps discounted too quickly the excitement of her position. She had gone too fast, as was the impulse of her nature. J...

Janet drew instinctively a little out of the way of the new-comer. It was not, we fear, with any intention of effacing herself, but to satisfy the spectator’s privilege of watch...

attention had not been called by another movement of a different kind. Julia, who had been lying as usual on the rug with her book between her mother’s chair and the fire--a pos...

“Oh!” said Janet, quite restored from that momentary impression. “I don’t know. Because it is curious to come into the middle of a story; it is like beginning a book, as you do...

Janet’s life seemed to herself to change from this day, though no one else seemed aware of any difference, and all its outward expressions went on as before. For a few nights sh...

These musical evenings became now the central events in the life of the house in St. John’s Wood. When they did not occur, and the evening passed in its former quiet fashion, wi...

This little incident could not be said to have much effect upon Janet’s relations with the family in which she was living, but yet it was not without some influence on the new o...

“Well,” said Mrs. Harwood, “he might have let us know sooner, and then I should not have ordered those partridges. Game is thrown away upon women. You all like a chicken just as...

Janet was not at all satisfied with herself after this performance. She understood, if nobody else did, the attitude of Gussy towards her; the half-defiance, half-sympathy, and...

Janet had no very strong curiosity about Dolff. What she had heard of him had not been calculated to rouse her interest, and still less the photographs about the house in which...

Janet, who, instead of being offended and dwelling upon his rudeness, had not thought of him at all, save with a certain passing satisfaction such as moves a woman involuntarily...

To tell the truth, he had been a little alarmed by his position in respect to Miss Harwood. The applause they had received at the concert, which somehow enveloped both of them i...

Meredith paused at the door inspecting the quiet interior thus thrown open to him--in which he was not looked for, and where, accordingly, his arrival remained unobserved--the d...

Janet sent out before her into the hall a bursting sigh, a hot wave of impatient fiery breath, which seemed to raise a little mist before her eyes as she emerged into the silenc...

Every family has a skeleton in some closet. So says the proverb; but is it true? We are all of us aware of many cases in which it is not true. To half of the world perhaps it is...

The day had been rainy, some time after these occurrences, and the governess and her pupil were taking their needful exercise in the garden--up one side and down the other under...

“Well,” said Gussy, “I cannot say that I see any harm in that. We have not had anything of the kind for a long time. We must see what mamma says. It does turn the house upside d...

Perhaps it was Julia’s question; perhaps it was the rapid seizure of her hand which she had not been able to prevent, which opened that self-discussion in Janet’s mind. “If Dolf...

The night of the ball arrived at last. It was a long time in coming to the impatience of Dolff and Julia: and even to Gussy, who was not impatient, who would rather have held it...

Meanwhile, all was going on merrily below, dance succeeding dance. The music was good, the floor was good. “Dolff’s men” had fully made up the number of partners necessary, and...

Charley Meredith walked home from St. John’s Wood to his chambers, which were in one of the streets about Berkeley Square, between two and three o’clock in the morning. It was i...

Janet had been so quickly summoned downstairs after her strange adventure that she had no leisure to think it over, until, about the time when Mr. Meredith set out on his walk,...

Gussy Harwood awoke next morning with a sense of exhilaration in her mind, as if, during the night, some burden had rolled off her shoulders. Had any burden been rolled off? The...

Janet withdrew as quickly as she could from the drawing-room when she had given Dolff the tea which he now took so regularly, and which his family considered such a sign of ment...

It was certainly impossible that any communication could take place in words between Janet and Meredith on the evening above recorded. He squeezed her hand significantly indeed,...

Dolff blotted himself out against the wall, under the tree which bent over the wall of his own garden, and threw a rugged shadow on the pavement. He was invisible in the gloom o...

There is nothing in the world that so suddenly sobers wild excitement and passion as to carry out its practical suggestions. A blow brings down the pulses of wrath as nothing el...

A week flew over the house in St. John’s Wood like a dream. Yet nothing could be more erroneous than to say that it flew the days went on feet of lead, not on wings--every hour...

Janet was not moved either by Gussy’s rapture or Dolff’s rage. To say that she was not relieved would be untrue, for it was, no doubt, a great relief to know that she was not in...

After this fright, however, which was--so much is that poison to one which is another’s antidote--so joyful for Gussy, everything relapsed into a still and apprehensive silence...

IT was not till a few days after this that Meredith’s growing strength permitted a reference to the circumstances of his “illness,” as they all called it, which, of course, was...

Remembering is a very slow progress when your mind is confused by serious illness, weakness, and the breaking off for a time of all threads of meaning in the mind. Meredith took...

It all came back like lightning when the policeman came once more. The family party were almost as before, when the man was announced again, bringing back the former excitement.

She was wild with excitement and alarm, her face alternately flushed and paled, her form trembling with endeavor to move, to push herself forward, to follow those dreadful emiss...

The policeman’s epigrammatic assertion that it was difficult for a known man to struggle with the police, is still more true when it is only a door which stands before a couple...

Next moment they had surged as on the top of a wave to the room within. Nothing could be more strange than the scene presented there. The room was curtained all round with red,...

Gussy was the last to leave of that strange procession, of whom no one spoke to the other. She closed the door after her, and the curtains, and followed the erect figure of Dolf...

It was strange that it should be Gussy, who was not ideal or visionary, but very matter-of-fact in all her ways, who was the most cruelly offended and wounded by the events of t...

The conduct of affairs in the house of the Harwoods was very dreary during the whole of this day. It was, to begin with, a very dreary day, not fog, which can be borne, but one...

Janet was passing quickly through the hall, coming from the garden by the long passage which led past the kitchen and pantry, and turning round to go upstairs, when she found he...

The same party with so many differences. There were only Mrs. Harwood and Meredith who were unchanged. She sat in the usual warm corner, with the usual white fleecy knitting, wh...

Dolff hurried out of the room so bewildered and dazed that he neither understood what this new revelation was, nor what he was sent out to do. He felt himself hustled out of the...

The explanation was over, but the family atmosphere was not cleared. Gussy indeed had been moved out of her resentment and doubt, partly for the sake of her lover, partly for th...

Meantime Janet, who had nothing to do with dinner-parties or anything of the kind, and who in the agitated state of the house appeared but little, and did not linger a moment lo...

Nothing, as Mrs. Harwood herself said, is so bad as you expect; and the great shock which the sight of this stranger evidently gave her soon subsided in the extraordinary compos...

There are times when Nemesis appears unwitting at the door of a doomed house, and, however unlikely that might be, before she crosses the threshold, with the mere wind of her co...