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‘This is the very best girl in the world, Colonel Hayward,’ said Mrs. Bellendean, with a hand upon Joyce’s shoulder. ‘I don’t wonder she interested you. She has taught herself every sort of thing—Latin and mathematics, and I don’t know all what. Our school is always at the head in all the examinations, and she really raises quite an enthusiasm among the children. I don’t know what we should do without her. Whenever we come here, Joyce is my right hand, and has been since she was quite a child.’

If it was condescension, it was of the most gracious kind. Mrs. Bellendean kept patting Joyce on the shoulder as she spoke, with a caressing touch: and her eyes and her voice were both soft. The girl responded with a look full of tenderness and pleasure. ‘Oh, mem, it is you who are always so good to me,’ she said.

The schoolmistress then! That was how the ploughman’s daughter had got her superior look. When he saw her closer, he thought he saw (enlightened by this knowledge) that it was only a superior look, not the aspect of a lady as he had supposed. Her dress had not the dainty perfection of the young ladies’ dresses; her hands were not delicate like theirs: and she said ‘mem’ to her patroness with an accent which—— Ah! but what did that accent remind him of? and the face? and, good heavens! the name? These criticisms passed like a cloud across his mind; the bewilderment and anxiety remained. He rose up from the bench, nobody having thought anything of his sudden subsidence, except that perhaps the old Colonel was tired with standing about. Oh that Elizabeth had been here! but in her absence he must do what he could for himself.