“I believe Miss Fanny has a great deal of study left uncompleted,” replied Miss Sharpe hurriedly. “The tumult of packing has thrown the schoolroom into confusion, and we have not applied ourselves in days. Indeed” — with an anxious, unseeing look over the peaceful countryside — “I believe we should make our way back to the schoolroom now. The weather is too oppressive to endure for long; and I would not have Miss Fanny the worse for the exercise.”

“Or yourself, my dear Miss Sharpe,” I observed. “We must not bring on another head-ache. Where is your parasol? That bonnet cannot shield you enough!”

“Indeed, it is quite adequate at present. The rain has proved most refreshing. But I am afraid that the weather in general does not agree with me of late,” she faltered. “It has been at once so dry, and so hot, that I am forever sneezing. My eyes have not stopped watering for days — only observe how reddened they have become.”

“You must lie down for an hour this morning with cold compresses of cucumber,” Lizzy told her, “and forgo your needlework for a time.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Miss Sharpe murmured, and dropped a curtsey. “Come along, Fanny.”

“But I should like to go to Eastwell above all things!” the girl protested, as her governess dragged her down the hillside. “I long for a picnic in the woods!”

“It would prove exceedingly damp, I am sure.”

“But I should not care a jot for that! Please say that I may go, Sharpie…”

I watched them idly for a moment, and then turned to my sister. She was perched on one of the temple's chairs, and looked as cool and elegant in her sky-blue muslin as though she lingered in a mountain glade.

“And what do you make of the governess's secrets, Lizzy?” I asked her. “For she certainly guards them jealously.”

“You astonish me, Jane. Can you believe little Sharpie to have a deceitful bone in her body?”

“Not, perhaps, deceitful,” I amended, “but retiring. She is a woman who keeps her own counsel, my dear— and at the moment, that is enough to make her ill.”

Lizzy said nothing for a moment, her green eyes following the diminishing pair. “Mrs. Metcalfe suggested that there might be something in her nature — unreconciled, perhaps — to her present situation.”

“Mrs. Metcalfe?”

“An excellent woman, and an old friend of my mother's. She was the instrument of Miss Sharpe's engagement at Godmersham.”

“I see. Miss Sharpe had been employed in the Metcalfe family?”

Lizzy shook her head. “She was brought up from a girl by Mrs. Metcalfe's sister, Lady Porterman. General Sir Thomas Porterman was a great friend of Miss Sharpe's parents, I believe — who died abroad, in a carriage accident, and left the child quite unprovided for. She was raised as almost a sister to Miss Lydia Porter-man, but on the latter's marriage last year, Lady Porter-man felt it was incumbent upon herself to arrange a situation for Miss Sharpe.”

“Raised as almost a sister,” I said slowly, “in a very elegant situation; and now descended to a position only slightly above that of a servant. What a sad reversal of Miss Sharpe's fortunes! I cannot wonder that she is unreconciled. It is only through the good offices — and generous purses — of my dear brothers, that Cassandra and I have escaped a similar fate.”

“It was improbable, you know, that she should remain with the Portermans forever; she must make her way in the world one day; and the sooner the break was forced, the more quickly she might recover.”

“But she has not recovered. How unfortunate that she did not follow Miss Porterman in matrimony.”

Lizzy pursed her lips, and fanned herself with a slip of paper I had discarded upon the table. “Can one ever reconcile oneself to so material a change? I am sure it has broken her heart. To be removed from a condition of elegance — a house in Town, a carriage at one's command, and every comfort contrived — the very best circle of Society — and to accept, instead, the instruction of a girl such as Fanny—! Who, however excellent in her way, must be a trial to one for whom every prospect of future delight must seem so decidedly at an end?”

I could offer no reply for several moments; my heart was torn. There are too many young ladies of good family and little fortune, consigned to the near-slavery of the governess trade — a condition neither exalted nor demeaning, but open to both influences, as the temper of the employer's household must dictate. Such women live in a half-world, neither domestic nor genteel, and must suffer a thousand slights, a thousand deprivations, a thousand hopes deferred; they end their days as impoverished as they began, forced to live on a pittance saved from the successive rounds of foolish young girls they have scrambled into a little learning — their own beauty quite wasted, the better part of their youth sacrificed. But for the generosity of my brothers, whose incomes must make up the default of my late father's, Cassandra and I might find ourselves dependent upon a similar fate — urging the haughty and condescending among our near-acquaintance to pay for the privilege of our indifferent French, our accomplishments on the pianoforte, and our claims to such elegance as a few years' residence in Bath might afford us. I shuddered and averted my eyes from the small figure of Anne Sharpe, now several hundred yards beyond the haven of the temple.

“I do not know what to do for her, Jane,” Lizzy said quietly. “A little higher, and she might be my intimate; a little lower, and I might be her patron. But as it is—”

“You may only preserve her from further degradation, with the sum of twenty pounds per annum. No wonder she longs to go to Town.”

Lizzy glanced at me swiftly. “Does she? I had understood she abhorred London. The dirt — the noise—”

“She was wild to be gone but a few days since. The prospect of packing assured her of the event's achievement. I thought I had denied her dearest wish, when I informed her that a removal was only a distant possibility.”

“How very odd,” Lizzy murmured. “Perhaps she has had a letter… an acquaintance returned to London…” She straightened up and shook the dust from her flounces. “We shall be late for Eastwell, Jane, and much tho' it should give me pleasure to incommode Lady Elizabeth, your brother is correct in believing that I cannot allow her the pleasure of despising me. In any case, we cannot plumb the depths of Anne Sharpe by speculating at a distance. It puts me in mind of the sort of complacent old cats who lined the ballrooms of my girlhood, making matches and scandal between the most improbable of lovers.”

“They line the ballroom still, Lizzy,” I replied, “and I am in a fair way to joining them myself.”

WE RETURNED TO THE GREAT HOUSE, AND PETITIONED Cook for raspberry cordial; it arrived almost directly from the ice-house, beaded with the most delicious moisture, on a silver tray. It was as we had finished one glass, and had determined we must exchange our morning gowns for travelling costumes more suited to the rigours of an open carriage, that Neddie and Henry returned from Mrs. Grey's funeral.

“My dear!” Lizzy cried, with more appearance of animation than was usual for her, “we are on the point of dressing for Eastwell, but cannot stir until you have told us all the news. How was the service conducted? Did the Comte and Mr. Grey come to blows? Who was so judicious in feeling as to attend?”

“Mr. James Wildman — Mr. Edward Taylor — Captain Woodford, of course; Mr. Toke, Mr. Sansible, and a few others not unknown to you.[34] Denys Collingforth failed to put in his appearance, as did your brother Edward, Lizzy; but the former was hardly expected, and the latter we may suppose to have been detained by his duty to his mother. Our Henry, however, was generally acclaimed the most sportingly — if inappropriately — attired.”