The Devil on Horseback

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It was a sequence of unfortunate events which brought me to the Chateau Silvaine. My father was a sea captain who had gone down with his ship when I was five years old and, having lived in moderate comfort all her life, my mother found herself forced to earn a living for herself and her daughter. A penniless woman, said my mother, must either live through her mop or her needle, unless she has some education which can be turned to good purpose. Being a woman in this category, she had two courses open to her; she could teach the young or be a companion to the elderly; she chose the former of these alternatives. She was a woman of strong character, determined to succeed and, with very little means at her disposal, she rented a small lodge on the estate of Sir John Derringham in Sussex and started a school for young ladies.

For a few years, if it did not exactly flourish, it provided us with the necessities of life. I had been a pupil and had received an excellent education under my mother’s tuition-the inference from the beginning being that, in due course, I should join her as a teacher, which for the last three months I had done.

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