ENTER--NURSE ROSEMARY
Nurse Rosemary Gray had arrived at Gleneesh.
When she and her "box" were deposited on the platform of the little wayside railway station, she felt she had indeed dropped from the clouds; leaving her own world, and her own identity, on some far-distant planet.
A motor waited outside the station, and she had a momentary fear lest she should receive deferential recognition from the chauffeur.
But he was as solid and stolid as any other portion of the car, and paid no more attention to her than he did to her baggage.The one was a nurse; the other, a box, both common nouns, and merely articles to be conveyed to Gleneesh according to orders.So he looked straight before him, presenting a sphinx-like profile beneath the peak of his leather cap, while a slow and solemn porter helped Jane and her luggage into the motor.When she had rewarded the porter with threepence, conscientiously endeavouring to live down to her box, the chauffeur moved foot and hand with the silent precision of a machine, they swung round into the open, and took the road for the hills.
Up into the fragrant heather and grey rocks; miles of moor and sky and solitude.More than ever Jane felt as if she had dropped into another world, and so small an incident as the omission of the usual respectful salute of a servant, gave her a delightful sense of success and security in her new role.
She had often heard of Garth's old castle up in the North, an inheritance from his mother's family, but was hardly prepared for so much picturesque beauty or such stateliness of archway and entrance.
As they wound up the hillside and the grey turrets came into view, with pine woods behind and above, she seemed to hear Garth's boyish voice under the cedar at Overdene, with its ring of buoyant enjoyment, saying: "I should like you to see Castle Gleneesh.You would enjoy the view from the terrace; and the pine woods, and the moor." And then he had laughingly declared his intention of getting up a "best party" of his own, with the duchess as chaperon; and she had promised to make one of it.And now he, the owner of all this loveliness, was blind and helpless; and she was entering the fair portals of Gleneesh, unknown to him, unrecognised by any, as a nurse-secretary sort of person.Jane had said at Overdene: "Yes, ask us, and see what happens." And now this was happening.What would happen next?
Garth's man, Simpson, received her at the door, and again a possible danger was safely passed.He had entered Garth's service within the last three years and evidently did not know her by sight.
