I was getting entangled in the maze of my thoughts. I felt lost, bewildered, completely shaken by this sudden understanding.

I WISHED that I could get away … out of this house. I was writing to Lilias but, of course, I could not mention in a letter what was in my mind. It would have been different if I could have talked to her.

My father did not notice the change in my attitude. It was different with Miss Grey. She noticed at once.

“Is anything troubling you, Davina?” she asked.

“No,” I lied.

“You seem …”

“How do I seem?”

She hesitated for a moment. “Different … as though you have something on your mind.”

I looked at her and I could not stop myself seeing her and my father on that bed as I had seen Kitty and Hamish. I felt sick.

“Do you feel all right?”

“Yes.”

“I think you might be sickening for something.”

Yes, I thought. I feel sick when I think about you and my father.

I hated him more than I did her. I thought: that is her way of life. She wasn’t really so shocked about Kitty and Hamish and didn’t pretend to be. She would say with Hamish: it’s human nature. Human nature for people like her and Hamish … and it seemed my father. He only held up his hands in horror when girls like Kitty succumbed to it. He went to church and prayed and thanked God that he was not as other men.

Then I started to think about Lilias. How strange that she should have been dismissed just when he wanted to bring another governess into the house. But Zillah Grey was not a governess. She was a Jolly Red Head. She was really a loose woman. That was what they called them. She was one of those and my father was by no means the good man he pretended to be.

My mind kept going back to Lilias. Who had put the necklace in her room? The more I thought of it the more strange it seemed. Could it be that my father had wanted Lilias out of the house so that he could conveniently bring Zillah Grey in … so that she could share his bed at night with the greatest ease?

He himself had selected her. He had said that. And it would have been impossible for her to masquerade as an educated woman, a proper governess, one of those genteel ladies who had fallen on hard times. So she had come to teach me the social graces. That was really amusing. I felt waves of bitterness sweeping over me.

What had this done to Lilias? She would have to go through life with that stigma upon her. People would say she had been dismissed for theft because a missing necklace was found in her room. I had always believed that someone had put it there. Now it seemed that someone might have had a reason for it, and I had a burning desire to find out who.

I could not imagine my father’s stealing into my room, taking the necklace and putting it into a drawer in Lilias’ room. That was beyond my imagination. But a short while ago should I have been able to visualise my father in positions which I could not get out of my mind?

I often found Miss Grey looking at me speculatively. I was betraying myself. I was not as skilled at subterfuge as they were.

I wondered whether Zillah Grey had guessed that I had discovered the truth about her relationship with my father. She was clearly a little anxious and I was not subtle enough to hide my feelings.

One afternoon my father arrived home early and very soon afterwards Miss Grey came to my room.

She said: “Your father wants you to go to his study. He has something to say to you.”

I looked surprised. I fancied he had been avoiding me lately. When we dined he seemed determined not to meet my eyes, but as he rarely addressed a remark to me it was not really necessary to do so.

She came with me to the study and shut the door behind us.

My father was standing leaning against his desk. She went and stood beside him.

“Sit down, Davina,” he said. “I want to tell you that Miss Grey has promised to become my wife.”

I stared at them both in astonishment.

Miss Grey came to me and kissed me.

“Dear Davina,” she said. “We have always got on so well. It is going to be wonderful.” She turned to my father. “Wonderful for us all,” she added.

She held out her hand and he took it. He was looking at me rather anxiously I thought.

“The wedding will not take place for another three months,” said my father. “We must wait the full year … and a little more, I think.”

I wanted to laugh at him. I wanted to cry out: “But you did not wait. This is a pretence. It’s all a pretence. There is sham everywhere.”

But “I see” was all I could manage to say.

“I am sure,” he went on, “that you will realise this is the best thing possible. You need a mother.”

And I thought, you need someone … as Hamish did.

It was disturbing how I heard myself speaking inwardly … saying things which I would never have dared say aloud, things which I would never have believed possible a year ago.

How I hated them standing there, pretending … both of them. But I hated him more than I did her.

“There will be a wedding,” I heard myself say stupidly; and that other voice within me said, of course there will be a wedding. A quiet one … all very right and proper … just as it should be … and no one will know.

“A quiet one naturally,” said my father.

“Naturally,” I repeated and wondered whether they noticed the sarcasm.

“Are you going to congratulate us?” asked Miss Grey archly.

I did not answer.

“It is something of a surprise, I have no doubt,” said my father. “But it will be the best thing possible … for us all. You will have a mother …”

I looked at Zillah Grey. She grimaced and somehow I liked her for that. She was not the hypocrite he was, whatever else she might be; and I think at that time it was the hypocrisy which was the greatest sin in my eyes.

“Well then,” said my father. “I want us to drink to the future.”

He opened a cupboard and took out three glasses and a bottle of champagne.

There was a little for me, less than half a glass. I kept thinking of Miss Grey lying on her bed singing “Mary Queen of Scots”; and I began to laugh.

My father smiled quite benignly, not understanding. When had he ever? I asked myself. But I think Miss Grey was aware of my feelings.

AT FIRST the news was received with dismay throughout the household, but after a few days they all seemed to accept it.

Mrs. Kirkwell had a little talk with me.

She said: “A lot has happened in this house lately, Miss Davina. Mr. Kirkwell and I were beginning to look on you as the mistress of the house. Of course, you are young as yet. We had thought that Mr. Glentyre might marry again, but we hadn’t thought it would be so soon.”

“It will be a year since my mother died when they marry.”

“Oh yes. Well, they couldna very well do it before. That wouldn’t have been right and Mr. Glentyre, he’s one who’ll always do what’s right. It’s soon … but it will be the full year. And we shall have a new lady of the house.” Mrs. Kirkwell wrinkled her brows. I knew she was thinking that it would be difficult to imagine Zillah Grey as the mistress of a staid Edinburgh residence.

“There’ll be changes,” she went on. “I’m sure of that. Well, we must take them as they come, I suppose. A man needs a wife … even a gentleman like Mr. Glentyre, and having a daughter to bring up.”

“I think I am brought up by now, don’t you, Mrs. Kirkwell?”

“Well, there’ll be things to arrange and a woman’s best for that even if …”

“I am glad you and Mr. Kirkwell are not too upset by all these changes.”

She shook her head sadly and I guessed she was thinking of the days when my mother was alive. I wondered if she were aware of Miss Grey’s nightly excursions. Mrs. Kirkwell was shrewd and she had always liked to be aware of what was going on in the house.

I imagined she and Mr. Kirkwell might have decided that when there were certain “goings-on” in a respectable house— men being what they were—it was as well to have them legalised.

And so the house settled down to a mood of greater serenity than it had enjoyed since my mother died.

Later I heard Mrs. Kirkwell’s comments on the mistress-of-the-house-to-be. “She’s not the interfering sort. That’s the kind neither Mr. Kirkwell nor me would work for.”

So, unsuitable as the match might seem to outsiders, it was— if somewhat grudgingly—accepted in the house, largely because it was recognised that a man needed a wife and the chosen one in this case was “not the interfering sort.”

THE WEDDING was, as had been decided, quiet—just a simple ceremony performed by the Reverend Charles Stocks who had been a friend of the family all my life.

There were few guests, chiefly friends of my father. Aunt Roberta did not appear, for the feud between her and my father continued. There were no friends of Zillah Grey present. The reception at the house was brief and very soon my father, with his bride, left for Italy.

THE GOVERNESS

I went at once to my room to write to Lilias.

“I have a stepmother now. It seems incongruous. So much has happened in the last year. Sometimes I wonder what is going to happen next …”

Jamie

WHEN THEY HAD GONE the house seemed very quiet and the strangeness of everything that had happened struck me afresh. I could not get out of my mind the fact that just over a year ago my mother had been alive and Lilias had been with me.

I had reached my seventeenth birthday in September and had left my childhood behind me—not only because of my age. I had learned so much—chiefly that people were not what they seemed to be. I had learned that a man like my father—outwardly a pillar of virtue—was capable of urges as powerful as those which had lured Kitty to abandon herself recklessly to disaster. They had carried my father so far that he had not only brought a woman like Zillah Grey into the house but had actually married her. So there was no doubt that I had grown up.