"Good-tempered?"

Alban again said "Yes."

"So much about herself," Mrs. Rook remarked. "About her family
now?" She shifted her bag restlessly from one hand to another.
"Perhaps you can tell me if Miss Emily's father--" she suddenly
corrected herself--"if Miss Emily's parents are living?"

"I don't know."

"You mean you won't tell me."

"I mean exactly what I have said."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," Mrs. Rook rejoined; "I shall find out at
the school. The first turning to the left, I think you
said--across the fields?"

He was too deeply interested in Emily to let the housekeeper go
without putting a question on his side:

"Is Sir Jervis Redwood one of Miss Emily's old friends?" he
asked.

"He? What put that into your head? He has never even seen Miss
Emily. She's going to our house--ah, the women are getting the
upper hand now, and serve the men right, I say!--she's going to
our house to be Sir Jervis's secretary. You would like to have