Mrs. Moffit picked up a letter and consulted it, looking at the young lady from time to time, as if taking stock of her appearance. "I received a letter this morning from the country--a family require a well-qualified governess for their one little girl. Your testimonials as to qualifications might suit--and you are, I believe, a gentlewoman----" "Oh, yes; my father was----" "Yes, yes, I remember--I've got it down; don't worry me," impatiently spoke the oracle, cutting short the interruption. "So far you might suit: but in other respects--I hardly know what to think." "But why?" asked the other timidly, blushing a little under the intent gaze. "Well, you are very young, for one thing; and they might think you too good-looking." The girl's blush grew red as a rose; she had delicate features and it made her look uncommonly pretty. A half-smile sat in her soft, dark hazel eyes. "Surely that could not be an impediment. I am not so good-looking as all that!" "That's as people may think," was the significant answer. "Some families will not take a pretty governess--afraid of their sons, you see. This family says nothing about looks; for aught I know there may be no sons in it. 'Thoroughly competent'--reading from the letter--'a gentlewoman by birth, of agreeable manners and lady-like. Salary, first year, to be forty pounds.'" "And will you not recommend me?" pleaded the young governess, her voice full of entreaty. "Oh, please do! I know I should be found fully competent, and promise you that I would do my best." "Well, there may be no harm in my writing to the lady about you," decided Mrs. Moffit, won over by the girl's gentle respect--with which she did not get treated by all her clients. "Suppose you come here again on Monday next?" The end of the matter was that Miss West was engaged by the lady mentioned--no other than Mrs. Carradyne. And she journeyed down into Worcestershire to enter upon the situation. But clever (and generally correct) Mrs. Moffit made one mistake, arising, no doubt, from the chronic state of hurry she was always in. "Miss West is the daughter of the late Colonel William West," she wrote, "who went to India with his regiment a few years ago, and died there." What Miss West had said to her was this: "My father, a clergyman, died when I was a little child, and my uncle William, Colonel West, the only relation I had left, died three years ago in India." Mrs. Moffit somehow confounded the two. This might not have mattered on the whole. But, as you perceive, it conveyed a wrong impression at Leet Hall. "The governess I have engaged is a Miss West; her father was a military man and a gentleman," spake Mrs. Carradyne one morning at breakfast to Captain Monk. "She is rather young--about twenty, I fancy; but an older person might never get on at all with Kate." "Had good references with her, I suppose?" said the Captain. "Oh, yes. From the agent, and especially from the ladies who have brought her up."