Uncle Silas

very tall woman in grey draperies, nearly white under the moo

unpleasantly on me; and the moment it was plain that I saw her, the grey woman began gobbling and cackling shri

e window!" I gasped; "

ld have summoned and sent forward a detachment

m - sh

f authority appro

by the first sight of our visitor, for he stopped short

doin' the

occupied a little time, was inaud

o round that way, you'll see the hall-door steps, an

aid somethin

and ye can't mi

ed with out-turned pumps and a grave inclination before me, a

he says she's

ness! What

-bred to smile, and h

I'd best as

ay strode the flat pumps of

om the study. She walked quickly, and muttered sharply to herself - an evil trick, in which she indulged when much "put about." I should have been glad of a word with

mpressed me so unpleasantly to take the command of me - to sit alone with

inite, when I heard my father's step approaching from the library: so I qu

n began his silent walk up and down the room. I was yearning to question him on the point

drawn, and the shutter partly opened, and he looked out perhaps wi

ed me of the arrival of Madame de la Rougierre to be my governess, highly recommended and perfectly

thority. The large-featured, smirking phantom, saluting me so oddly in the m

; they're not natural, I think. I gave her her supper in my room. She eats like a wolf, she does, the great raw-boned hannimal. I wish you saw her in bed as I did. I put her next the clockroom - sh

. Rusk's satire, a weapon in which she w

compliments from me, Miss - no, I rayther think not. I wonder why honest English girls won't answer the gentry

reat bands of black hair, too think and black, perhaps, to correspond quite naturally with her bleached and sallow skin, her hollow haws, and the fine but grim wr

hat is Mademoiselle's nam

, Mad

ry good little girl - is not so? - and I am sure I shall love you vary moche. An

t begun the use of the globes

lobes, which stood nea

one of them with her great hand. "J

ehow her "explications," as she termed them, were not very intelligible, and when pressed her t

her strange way, more awful in the eyes of a nervous child, I may say, such as I was. She used to look at me for a long time s

e or out of the window, plainly seeing nothing, and with an odd, fixed l

ometimes she had accesses of a sort of hilarity which frightened me still mo