She found herself in a library. It was quite as untidy as the hall, but a quantity of candles in tarnished wall brackets threw a warm light over it, and a log fire burned in the grate at the far end of it. Before this fire, one hand resting on the mantelpiece, one booted foot on the fender, stood a gentleman in buckskin breeches and a mulberry coat, staring down at the leaping flames. As the door closed behind Miss Rochdale he looked up and across at her in a measuring way that might have disconcerted one less accustomed to being weighed up like so much merchandise offered for sale. He might have been any age between thirty and forty. Miss Rochdale realized that he must be her employer’s husband, and was a good deal cheered to discover that besides being a very gentlemanlike-looking man, with a well-favored countenance and a distinct air of breeding, he was dressed with a neatness and a propriety at welcome variance with his surroundings. He had, in fact, all the appearance of a man of fashion.

He did not move to meet her, so Miss Rochdale advanced into the room, saying, “Good evening. The servant desired me to enter this room, but perhaps—?”

It seemed to her that there was a faint look of surprise in his face, but he replied in a cool voice, “Yes, that was by my orders. Pray be seated! I trust you were not kept waiting at the coach stop?”

“No, indeed!” she said, taking a chair by the table, and folding her hands over her reticule in her lap. “The carriage was waiting for me. I must thank you for having sent it.”

“I should certainly doubt of there being a suitable conveyance in these stables,” he said.

This remark, uttered as it was in an indifferent tone, seemed extremely odd to Miss Rochdale. She must have shown that she was taken aback, for he added stiffly, “I believe that the exact nature of the position offered to you was explained in London?”

“I believe so,” she returned.

“I chose that you should be brought here directly,” he said.

She looked startled. “I thought—I was under the impression—that this was my destination!”

“It is,” he said, rather grimly. “However, I do not desire that you should be under any misapprehension. I am giving you the opportunity to see with your own eyes what may not have been adequately described to you, before we come to any definite bargain.” His level gray eyes swept the disordered room as he spoke, and then returned to their scrutiny of her countenance.

She hoped that she succeeded in preserving it. She said, “I do not understand you, sir. For my part, I considered myself definitely engaged when I set out from London to come here.”

He bowed slightly. “Oh, yes! If you still wish it!”

She could not be sure that she did, but the alternative prospect of returning to town to seek another post caused her to say cheerfully, “I shall do my best, sir, to fill the position satisfactorily.” She detected irony in his steady gaze, and was disconcerted by it. She added with a slightly heightened color, “I was not aware, however, that it was you who had engaged me. I thought—”

“It was unnecessary that you should know it,” he said. “Once you have made up your mind to the bargain, I have nothing more to say in the matter.”

From what she had seen of his wife she could readily believe this; the only surprise she felt was at his having had any say at all in the matter. Yet his manner was very much that of a man accustomed to command. Feeling herself to be at a loss, she said, after a short pause, “Perhaps it would be as well if I were to lose no time in making the acquaintance of my charge.”

His lip curled. “An apt term!” he remarked dryly. “By all means, but your charge is not at the moment on the premises. You shall see him presently. If what you must already have observed has not daunted you, you encourage me to hope that your resolution will not fail when you are brought face to face with him.”

“I trust not, indeed,” she said, with a smile. “I was given to understand, I own, that I might find him a trifle—a trifle high-spirited, perhaps.”

“You have either a genius for understatement, ma’am, or the truth was not told you, if that is what you understand.”

She laughed. “Well, you are very frank, sir! I should not expect to be told quite all the truth, but I might collect it, reading between the lines, I fancy.”

“You are a brave woman!” he said.

Her amusement grew. “I am sure I am no such thing! I can but contrive as best I may. I dare say he has been a little spoiled?”

“I doubt of there being anything to spoil,” he replied.

The coldly dispassionate tone in which he uttered this remark made her reply in equally chilly accents, “You do not desire me, I am persuaded, to refine too much upon your words, sir. I am very hopeful of teaching him to mind me in time.”

“Teaching him to mind you?” he repeated, with a strong inflection of astonishment in his voice. “You will have performed something indeed if you succeed in doing so! You will have, moreover, the distinction of being the only person to whom he has attended in all his life!”

“Surely, sir, you—?” she faltered.

“Good God, no!” he said impatiently.

“Well—well, I must put forth my best efforts,” she said.

“If you mean to remain here, you would be better advised to turn your attention to the evils you can more easily remedy,” he said, with another glance of dislike around the room.

She was nettled and allowed herself to reply with a touch of asperity, “I was not informed, sir, that it was to fill the position of housekeeper that I was engaged. I am accustomed to keep my own apartment neat and clean, but I can assure you I shall not meddle in the general management of the house.”

He shrugged, and turned away from her to stir the now smoldering log with his foot. “You will do as seems best to you,” he said. “It is no concern of mine. But rid your mind of whatever romantic notions it may cherish! Your charge, as you choose to call him, may be induced to accept you, but that is because I can force him to do so and for no other reason. Do not flatter yourself that he will regard you with complaisance! I do not expect you to remain above a week: you need not remain as long, unless you choose to do so.”

“Not remain above a week!” she exclaimed. “He cannot be as bad as you would have, me think, sir! It is absurd to speak in such a way! Pardon me, but you should not talk so!”

“I wish you to know the truth, to have the opportunity to reconsider your decision.”

A good deal dismayed, she could only say, “I must do what I can. I own, I had not supposed—but I am not in a position—in a position lightly to decline—”

“No. So, indeed, I apprehended,” he said. “It could not have been otherwise.”

She stared at him. “Well! This is frank indeed! I am sure I am at a loss to guess why, having engaged me, you should now be so set on turning me away, sir!”

At that he smiled, which made his somewhat forbidding countenance appear very much more pleasing. “It is certainly absurd,” he agreed. “You are not what I had expected, ma’am. I must tell you that I think you too young.”

Her spirits sank. “I made no secret of my age, sir. I am perhaps older than you imagine. I am six and twenty.”

“You look younger,” he commented.

“I hope it need not signify, sir. I assure you, I am not without experience.”

“You can hardly have had experience of what now lies before you,” he retorted.

A dreadful suspicion crossed Miss Rochdale’s mind. “Good heavens, he is not—he surely cannot be—deranged, sir?” she exclaimed.

“No, he is quite sane,” he answered. “It is brandy, not madness, to which the greater part of his propensity for evil is attributable.”

“Brandy?”she gasped.

He raised his brows. “Yes, I thought you had not been told the whole,” he said. “I am sorry. I intended—and indeed ordered—otherwise.”

Miss Rochdale now realized that not her charge but her employer was mentally deranged. She rose to her feet, saying with a firmness which she hoped concealed her inward alarm, “I think, sir, it would be best that I should present myself without further loss of time to Mrs. Macclesfield.”

“To whom?” he asked, rather blankly.

“Your wife!” she said, retreating strategically toward the door.

He said with unruffled calm, “I am not married.”

“Not married?” she cried. “Then—have I been under a misapprehension? Are you not Mr. Macclesfield?”

“Certainly not,” he replied. “I am Carlyon.”

He appeared to think that this statement was sufficient to apprise her of all she could possibly wish to know about him. She was wholly bewildered, and could only stammer, “I beg your pardon! I thought—But where, then, is Mrs. Macclesfield?”

“I do not think I know the lady.”

“You do not know her! Is this not her house, sir?”

“No,” he said.

“Oh, there has been some dreadful mistake!” she cried distressfully. “I do not know how it can have come about! Indeed, I am very sorry, Mr. Carlyon, but I think I am come to the wrong house!”

“So it would appear, ma’am.”

“It is the most mortifying circumstance! I do beg your pardon! But when the servant asked me if I was come in answer to the advertisement I thought—But I should have inquired more particularly!”

“Did you come in answer to the advertisement?” he interrupted, his brow creasing. “Not mine, I fancy!”

“Oh, no! I was hired by Mrs. Macclesfield to be governess to her children—more particularly, her little boy.” In spite of herself, she began to laugh. “Oh, dear, could anything be more nonsensical? You may conceive what an effect your words had upon me!”