The Arrival

Such a sight had never yet been seen at the House. The porter had been summoned to open the gate. Not the huge wrought-iron ones though, that rose to sharp gilt-pointed tips, but the side gate. The little wooden side gate whose only admittances to date had been from the physician and the clergy. Today it would welcome a very different type of visitor.
Eleanor watched the man, tall, fashionably dressed stride into the quadrangle. He stopped in the middle, case in hand, and looked up. Indeed, Eleanor felt that this visitor was surveying the building, sizing it up, as if as some challenge. She followed his gaze as he took in the east and west wings, cataloguing each window, every alcove; all the ornamentation and ostentation that made up the House, until his eyes settled on her, peering out from behind the panes of a corridor window. And they burned.
‘Miss Eleanor!’ cried a voice from behind her. She gasped in an unknown fear as she turned to find herself face to face with her superior.
‘Get away from that window and get to your morning tasks’ barked the voice of the matron. ‘Idleness is not tolerated in my staff.’
‘Of course, ma’m. Sorry.’ Eleanor made a polite curtsey and hurried down the hall, her skirts swishing underneath her. The image of the man in the quadrangle, and the look he gave her, or she thought he had given played on her imagination all the way back to the servant quarters. But as Maisie was later to reassure Eleanor, it was just her imagination, because no person had eyes that could see the distance across the courtyard clearly, let alone identify a person at the window. And even then, Eleanor had said herself, she was only peeping around the corner lest someone catch her, as the matron inevitably had.
But Eleanor was right to have her doubts. For that man in the middle of the courtyard had clearly seen the pale face illuminated by the evening sun at the window. More importantly, he saw the flicker of recognition at their gazes meeting, before she disappeared into the darkness of the passage.
‘Hmm’ he chuckled under his breath, ‘Yes, I think this place will be fine’.