” We’ll be friends,” I said. ” I want us to be. If we were friends, you wouldn’t be lonely, would you?”

She shook her head, and I fancied that the eyes which surveyed me had lost something of their blankness; she was not trembling now, and I was sure that she was no longer afraid of me.

Then suddenly she slipped out of my grasp and ran to the door. I did not pursue her and, as she opened the door and turned to look back at me, there was a faint smile on her lips. Then she was gone.

I believed that I had established a little friendliness between us. I believed that she bad lost her fear of me.

Then I thought of Alice, who had been kind to this child. I was beginning to build up the picture of Alice more dearly in my mind.

I went to the window and looked across the L-shaped building to the window of the room, and I thought of that night when I had seen the shadow on the blind.

My discovery of Gilly did not explain that. It was no child I bad seen silhouetted there. It had been a woman.

Gilly might hide herself in Alice’s room, but the shadow I had seen on the blind that night did not belong to her.

It was the next day when I went to Mrs. Polgrey’s room for a cup of tea. She was delighted to invite me. ” Mrs. Polgrey,” I had said, ” I have a matter which I feel to be of some importance, and I should very much like to discuss this with you.

She was bridled with pride. I could see that the governess who sought her advice must be, in her eyes, the ideal governess.

” I shall be delighted to give you an hour of my company and a cup of my best Earl Grey,” she told me.

Over the teacups she surveyed me with an expression bordering on the affectionate.

” Now, Miss Leigh, pray tell me what it is you would ask of me.”

” I am a little disturbed,” I told her, stirring my tea thoughtfully.

” It is due to a remark of Alvean’s. I am sure that she listens to gossip, and I think it most undesirable in a child of her age.”

” Or in any of us as I am sure a young lady of your good sense would feel,” replied Mrs. Polgrey with what I could not help feeling was a certain amount of hypocrisy.

I told her how we had walked in the cliff gardens and met the master with Lady Treslyn. ” And then,” I went on, ” Alvean made this offensive remark. She said that Lady Treslyn hoped to become her mamma.”

Mrs. Polgrey shook her head. She said: ” What about a spoonful of whisky in your tea, Miss? There’s nothing like it for keeping up the spirits.”

I had no desire for the whisky but I could see that Mrs. Polgrey had, and she would have been disappointed if I had refused to join her in her tea tippling, so I said: ” A small teaspoonful, please, Mrs. Polgrey. “

She unlocked the cupboard, took out the bottle and measured out the whisky even more meticulously than she measured her tea. I found myself wondering what other stores she kept in that cupboard of hers.

Now we were like a pair of conspirators and Mrs. Polgrey was clearly enjoying herself.

” I fear you will find it somewhat shocking. Miss,” she began.

” I am prepared,” I assured her.

” Well, Sir Thomas Treslyn is a very old man and only a few years ago he married this young lady, a play-actress, some say, from London. Sir Thomas went there on a visit and returned with her. He set the neighbourhood agog, I can tell you, Miss.”

” I can well believe that.”

” There’s some that say she’s one of the handsomest women in the country.”

” I can believe that too.”

” Handsome is as handsome does.”

” But it remains handsome outwardly,” I added.

” And men can be foolish. The Master has his weakness,” admitted Mrs. Polgrey.

” If there is gossip I am most anxious that it shall not reach Alvean’s ears.”

” Of course you are, Miss. But gossip there is, and that child’s got ears like a hare’s.”

” Do you think Daisy and Kitty chatter?”

Mrs. Polgrey came closer and I smelt the whisky on her breath. I was startled, wondering whether she could smell it on mine. ” Everybody chatters. Miss.”

” I see.”

” There’s some as say that they’m not the sort to wait for blessing of clergy.”

” Well, perhaps they are not.”

I felt wretched. I hate this, I told myself. It’s so sordid. So horrible for a sensitive girl like Alvean.

” The Master is impulsive by nature and in his way he is fond of the women.”

“So you think” -She nodded gravely. ” When Sir Thomas dies there’ll be a new mistress in this house. All they have to wait for now is for him to go. Mrs. TreMellyn, her . her’s already gone. “

I did not want to ask the question which came to my lips but it seemed as though there were some force within me which would not let me avoid it. ” And was it so … when Mrs. TreMellyn was alive?”

Mrs. Polgrey nodded slowly. ” He visited her often. It started almost as soon as she came. Sometimes he rides out at night and we don’t see him till morning. Well, he’m Master and ‘tis for him to make his own rules.

“Tis for us to cook and dust and house keep or teach the child . whatsoever we’m here for. And there’s an end of it.”

” So you think that Alvean is only repeating what everyone knows? When Sir Thomas dies Lady Treslyn will be her new mamma.”

” There’s some on us that thinks it’s more than likely, and some that wouldn’t be sorry to see it. Her ladyship’s not the kind to interfere much with our side of the house; and ‘tis better to have these things regularised, so I do say.” She went on piously: ” I’d sonner see the Master of the house I serve living in wedlock than in sin, I do assure you. And so would we all.”

” Could we warn the girls not to chatter, before Alvean, of these matters?”

” As well try to keep a cuckoo from singing in the spring. I y could wollop them two till I dropped with exhaustion and still they’d gossip. They can’t help it. It be in their blood. And there’s nothing much to choose between one girl and the other. Nowadays” I nodded sympathetically. I was thinking of Alice, who had watched the relationship between her husband and Lady Treslyn. No wonder she had been prepared to run away with Geoffry Nansellock.

Poor Alice! I thought. What you must have suffered, married to such a man.

Mrs. Polgrey was in such an expansive mood that I felt I might extend the conversation to other matters in which I happened to be interested.

I said: “Have you ever thought of teaching Gilly her letters?”

” Gilly! Why that would be a senseless thing to do. You must know, Miss, that Gilly is not quite as she should be.” Mrs. Polgrey tapped her forehead.

” She sings a great deal. She must have learned the songs. If she could learn songs, could she not learn other things?”

” She’s a queer little thing. Reckon it was the way she come. I don’t often talk about such things, but I’ll swear you’ve been hearing about my Jennifer.” Mrs. Polgrey’s voice changed a little, became touched with sentiment. I wondered if it had anything to do with the whisky and how many spoonfuls she had taken that day. ” Sometimes I think that Gillyflower is a cursed child. Us didn’t want her; why, she was only a little thing in a cradle … two months old … when Jennifer went. The tide brought her body in two days after.

“Twas found there in Mellyn Cove.”

” I’m sorry,” I said gently.

Mrs. Polgrey shook herself free of sentiment. ” Her’d gone, but there was still Gilly. And right from the first her didn’t seem quite like other children.”

” Perhaps she sensed the tragedy,” I ventured.

Mrs. Polgrey looked at me with hauteur. ” We did all we could for her me and Mr. Polgrey. He thought the world of her.”

” When did you notice that she was not like other children?”

” Come to think of it it would be when she was about four years old.”

” That would be how many years ago?”

” About four.”

” She must be the same age as Alvean. She looks so much younger.”

” Born a few months after Miss Alvean. They’d play together now and then … being in the house, you do see, and being of an age. There was an accident when she was, let me see … she’d be approaching her fourth birthday.”

” What sort of accident?”

” She was playing in the drive there, not far from the lodge gates.

The Mistress were riding along the drive to the house. She was a great horsewoman, the Mistress. Gilly, her darted out from the bushes and caught a blow from the horse. She fell on her head. It was a mercy she weren’t killed. “

” Poor Gilly,” I said.

” The Mistress were distressed. Blamed herself although ‘twas no blame to her. Gilly should have known better. She’d been told to watch the roads often enough. Darted out after a butterfly, like as not. Gilly has always been taken with birds and flowers and insects and such like. The Mistress made much of her after that. Gilly used to follow her about and fret when she was away.”

” I see,” I said.

Mrs. Polgrey poured herself another cup of tea and asked me if I would have another. I declined. I saw her tilt the teaspoonful of whisky into the cup. ” Gilly,” she went on, ” were born in sin. Her had no right to come into the world. It looks like God be taking vengeance on her, for it do say that the sins of the fathers be visited on the children.”

I felt a sudden wave of anger sweep over me. I was in revolt against such distortions. I felt I wanted to slap the face of the woman who could sit there calmly drinking her whisky and accepting the plight of her little granddaughter as God’s will.