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"Miss Bunting," said Anne after a silence, during which the governess had been thinking the thoughts we have just described. "Do you know who I think you are like?"

Miss Bunting ran rapidly through, in her mind, a few famous governesses: Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Genlis, Madame de la Rougierre, Miss Weston, the Good French Governess, Jane Eyre: but to none of these characters could she flatter herself that she had the least resemblance. So she said she could not guess.

"I think," said Anne, her large grey eyes lighting as she spoke, "that you are like the Abbé Faria."

Even Miss Bunting, the imperturbable, the omniscient, was taken aback. For the life of her she could not place the Abbé. Meredith's Farina dashed wildly across her mind, but she dismissed it coldly. No, think as she would, the right echo could not sound.

"Because," continued Anne, pursuing her own train of thought, "I really was a kind of prisoner and getting so stupid and you did rescue me in a sort of way. I mean telling me about books and about how to write to Lady Pomfret or the Dean if I had to--oh and heaps of things. I don't mean making a tunnel really of course."