"She wants to make herself out of some consequence," said the Baroness;
"she knows she will soon be past work and she wants to appeal to our
sympathies. Her grandfather, indeed!"

The Baroness had the usual number of grandfathers, but she never, never
boasted about them.

"I dare say her grandfather was a pantry boy or something of the sort in
the castle," sniggered the Baron; "that part of the story may be true."

The merchant from Hamburg said nothing; he had seen tears in the old
woman's eyes when she spoke of guarding her memories--or, being of an
imaginative disposition, he thought he had.

"I shall give her notice to go as soon as the New Year festivities are
over," said the Baroness; "till then I shall be too busy to manage
without her."

But she had to manage without her all the same, for in the cold biting
weather after Christmas, the old governess fell ill and kept to her room.

"It is most provoking," said the Baroness, as her guests sat round the
fire on one of the last evenings of the dying year; "all the time that
she has been with us I cannot remember that she was ever seriously ill,
too ill to go about and do her work, I mean. And now, when I have the
house full, and she could be useful in so many ways, she goes and breaks
down. One is sorry for her, of course, she looks so withered and
shrunken, but it is intensely annoying all the same."