“The man handed me a chair as if I were a lady and not a would-be governess. I sat down and then I looked at him. I don’t know now what there was in his face that seemed familiar. I only saw it in that first glance; afterward I knew perfectly well that he was an utter stranger. “He was rather tall and rather dark and thin. I think now that if he had let it his hair would have been gray, but then I just saw it was black. He had a pale face, wrinkled and full of crow’s-feet round the eyes, and they were very dark, almost black. They puzzled me--their shape--I seemed to know that. But the way they looked at me was not like any eyes I know or ever have known. He wore beautiful clothes and had a London man’s manner. I mean those men you meet in the season who are so civil and so quiet, as if no one in the world was their superior and there was no occasion to assert themselves. I ought to know that manner by this time. “This man seemed to take me in without looking at me. I remembered I had on old gloves. “‘This lady, I think,’ he said to the registry woman, ‘wishes to be a governess?’ “‘Miss Holbeach? Yes, sir,’ She frowned at me to stand up, but I couldn’t. The man sat down by me, and it was then I saw how lined his face was. He looked fifty when you were close to him. “‘Miss Holbeach; thank you!’ He just glanced at her, but she went away as if he had pushed her. Then he spoke to me. He wanted a governess, or rather a companion, for his ward, a girl of sixteen. Lessons were not so much an object as being willing to go abroad. His ward was obliged to winter in the South. She was not strong. I could only stare at him; the thought of getting a situation and getting out of England at the same time nearly made me cry with joy--till I remembered a man like this would never take me for his ward’s governess. “‘I won’t do,’ I said. ‘You will not want me. I have not any--any references!’ My own voice sounded so odd to me, as if I had never heard it before. “‘Oh,’ he said slowly, ‘you have no references,’ and I saw something so queer in his look that I could not answer from astonishment. “A woman like me, who watches a man’s face for sunshine or bad weather, learns little things. This man’s forehead, instead of contracting between the eyebrows with annoyance, had grown smooth with relief. I couldn’t understand it then, and I can’t now; but I know he was relieved that I had no references. “‘This woman knows you?’ he said. “‘Only because I came here for work,’ it was no use pretending things, and I didn’t try. “‘You have not always been a governess, is that it?’ He spoke so quietly that I knew the woman at the desk could not hear him, but I answered out loud: “‘I was educated for a governess, but I have had no need to earn money for some years. Now I must--do something,’ and I couldn’t keep my lips steady.