After a dinner party we would all sit round the big table and hear from Jess and Mr. Catterwick what the guests were like. Mr. Catterwick often reported that there was a lot of high-flown talk and he couldn’t understand half of it and Jess said that in some houses you’d get some exciting scandal. It was more interesting than talk about a lot of vases and figures and what was happening in outlandish places.

I wished that I could hide myself under the table and listen. For there was no doubt in my mind that the most interesting person in the house was Mr. Sylvester Milner.

Sometimes when I was in the gardens I would look up to the barred window and I often fancied I saw a shadow there. Once I saw him quite clearly. He stood still looking down and I stood looking up. I began to get the impression that he was watching me.

This thought began to obsess me. He had never mentioned to my mother that he had discovered me in his Treasure Room. She had said that she thought it very understanding of him, though she did wish he had put her mind at rest at that time. She began to feel confident that we were safe here. But in a year or so I should be leaving school and the problem would then arise as to what I should do.

The girls at Cluntons’ were destined to have London seasons, when they would attend balls and no doubt in due course find husbands. My circumstances were very different. My mother said that perhaps my father’s family would after all realize their duty and come forward to launch me, but she said it halfheartedly, and although her outlook was optimistic she always believed in making provisions.

“You will be an extremely well-educated girl,” she said. “There are few schools to compare with Cluntons’ and if we can keep you there until your eighteenth birthday you will have had as good an education as any young lady could have.” I was nearly seventeen years old; we had a year to consider.

“We owe a lot to the grace of Mr. Sylvester Milner,” I said.

My mother agreed that it had been a good day for us when she had answered that advertisement. It was true that nothing could have happened to change our lives so completely and since we must live without my father, this was the best possible way to do it. It was as though we lived within a large family and there was always something of interest going on.

It was when I came home for the summer holidays during which I would be seventeen that my mother appeared to be excited about something. She met me at the station in the jingle, she herself driving Pan the pony.

I was always thrilled when the train drew into the little station with the name Rolandsmere colorfully displayed in geraniums, pansies, lobelias, and yellow alyssum. There was lavender and mignonette bordering the bed in which the name had been planted and their delicious perfume filled the air.

I noticed that my mother was suppressing some excitement and that what had happened was good. She embraced me with the usual warmth and we settled into the jingle. As she took the reins I asked how everyone was at Roland’s Croft and she told me that Mrs. Couch had baked a welcome home cake for me and had talked of little else but my return for days and that even Mr. Catterwick had said that he hoped the weather would be fine for me. Amy and Jess were well but Jess was far too friendly with Jeffers and Mrs. Jeffers did not like that at all. Amy was being courted by the unmarried gardener and it looked as if they might make a match of it which would be good, for they wouldn’t lose Amy then.

“And Mr. Sylvester Milner?”

“He’s home.”

She was silent. So her excitement had something to do with him.

“He is well?” I asked.

She did not answer and I cried in sudden fear: “Mother, everything’s all right, isn’t it? He’s not sending us away.”

It was a long time since he had discovered me in his Treasure Room, but perhaps he liked to keep people in suspense for a long time. I had thought he must be a kind man, but I had always felt him to be inscrutable. Perhaps he had only pretended to be kind.

“No,” she said. “Far from it. He has been talking to me.”

“What about?”

“About you.”

“Because I went into the Treasure Room…”

“He is interested in you. He is a very kind gentleman, Jane. He asked me how long you would stay at school. I said that the young ladies of your father’s family had left Cluntons’ when they were eighteen and that I hoped you would do the same. He said: ‘And then?’”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said we should have to wait and see. He asked me if your father’s family had provided for you in any way. I told him they ignored this duty and he said that he thought that you must be considering taking a post of some sort when you left school. He said: ‘Your daughter will have the education to teach others. Perhaps this is what you have in mind for her.’”

I shuddered. “I don’t want to think of that,” I said. “I want to go on like this forever… going to school and coming home to Roland’s Croft.”

“You’ve taken to this place, Janey.”

“I was excited by it the moment I saw it. There’s the forest and the Treasure Room and Mrs. Couch and all of them, and of course Mr. Sylvester Milner.”

“He wants to talk to you, Jane.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“How… strange! What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. But I believe your father knows how anxious I am about the future. I believe he is doing something about it.”

“Do you think he forgave me for trespassing?”

“You were young. I think he forgave that.”

“But he is so… strange.”

“Yes,” said my mother slowly, “he is a strange man. You never know what he’s thinking. It could be quite different from what he’s saying. But I think he’s a kind man.”

“When am I to see him?”

“He wants you to take tea with him tomorrow.”

“Do you think he’s going to tell me he doesn’t want inquisitive people in his house?”

“It couldn’t be that after all this time.”

“I’m not so sure. He might like to keep people on tenterhooks. It’s a kind of torture.”

“We haven’t been on tenterhooks. I never gave the matter a thought after those Christmas holidays.”

“I’m not sure. I often thought he was watching me.”

“Janey. You’re imagining again.”

“No. I saw him twice at his window when I was in the garden.”

“Now don’t start working up one of your fantasies. Be patient and wait till you see him tomorrow.”

“It’s hard because tomorrow seems a long way off.”

Young Ted Jeffers came out and took the jingle round to the stables. I went into the kitchen. Mrs. Couch wiped her floury arms on a towel and embraced me. “Amy,” she called. “Jess. She’s here.” And there they were, so pleased to see me and telling me I’d grown and would have to get more color in my cheeks and was quite the young lady.

“Now she’s here we’ll have the tea so don’t stand gaping,” said Mrs. Couch.

It was certainly coming home. There was Mrs. Couch’s pride with WELCOME HOME, JANE pink icing letters on white icing, and her special potato cakes and Chelsea buns, all my favorites well remembered.

“They say it’s going to be a hot summer,” said Mrs. Couch. “All the signs. Not too much sun, I hope. It’s bad for the fruit Then I shan’t be able to get my plums the right flavor. Last year’s sloe gin has come up better than ever and the elderberry’s ready for tasting.”

There was a slight change in everyone—Amy was flushed with a kind of radiance because the gardener was planning as she told me later “to make her his own”; Jess had a glitter in her eyes and she and Jeffers flashed secret messages to each other. Mr. Catterwick unbent for a moment to say it was like the old days to have someone home to the house from Cluntons’, and I felt happy to be there.

After tea I went to the stables to look at Grundel the pony which Mr. Sylvester Milner had allowed me to ride the last time I was here.

“She’s been waiting for you, Miss Jane,” said the young boy whom Mr. Jeffers was training as a groom. And as she nuzzled up against me, I believed she had.

Then I took my usual walk through the copse to the enchanted forest and I thought how wonderful it all was and that I had come to love this place. And all the time at the back of my mind was the thought: Tomorrow I shall see him. Perhaps he will tell me what he really thinks of me, why he did not forbid me the house after I had behaved so badly as to trespass in his secret room; why he watches me—as I was sure he did—from the windows of his apartments.

The next day I was ready about an hour before I was due to go to his sitting room. I had combed my hair and tied it back with a red ribbon. I put on the best gown I possessed. My father had chosen it for me a few months before he died. It had been my birthday present and I recalled the September day when we had gone to buy it. It was light navy in color with small scarlet silk-covered buttons down the front. It was my favorite dress, and my father had said it became me well.

My mother came into my room, a slight frown between her eyes.

“Oh, you’re ready, Jane. Yes, that’s right. You look neat.”

“What should he want to say to me. Mother?”

“You will know soon enough, Jane. Be careful.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t forget that we owe all this to him.”

“You work hard here. I daresay he is glad to have you.”

“He could find another housekeeper easily. Don’t forget he has allowed you to come here, to live here, almost as a member of the family. Not many would have done that and I can’t imagine what we should have done but for that.”