CHAPTER XII IN THE FOG MISS EMSDALE did not ask Mrs. Smith-Parvis for a "reference." She dreaded the interview that was set for seven o'clock that evening. The butler had informed her on her return to the house shortly after five that Mrs. Smith-Parvis would see her at seven in the library, after all, instead of in her boudoir, and she was to look sharp about being prompt. The young lady smiled. "It's all one to me, Rogers,--the library or the boudoir." "First it was the boudoir, Miss, and then it was the library, and then the boudoir again,--and now the library. It seems to be quite settled, however. It's been nearly 'arf an hour since the last change was made. Shouldn't surprise me if it sticks." "It gives me an hour and a half to get my things together," said she, much more brightly than he thought possible in one about to be "sacked." "Will you be good enough to order a taxi for me at half-past seven, Rogers?" Rogers stiffened. This was not the tone or the manner of a governess. He had a feeling that he ought to resent it, and yet he suddenly found himself powerless to do so. No one had spoken to him in just that way in fifteen years. "Very good, Miss Emsdale. Seven-thirty." He went away strangely puzzled, and not a little disgusted with himself. She expected to find that Stuyvesant had carried out his threat to vilify her, and was prepared for a bitter ten minutes with the outraged mistress of the house, who would hardly let her escape without a severe lacing. She would be dismissed without a "character." She packed her boxes and the two or three hand-bags that had come over from London with her. A heightened colour was in her cheeks, and there was a repelling gleam in her blue eyes. She was wondering whether she could keep herself in hand during the tirade. Her temper was a hot one. A not distant Irish ancestor occasionally got loose in her blood and played havoc with the strain inherited from a whole regiment of English forebears. On such occasions, she flared up in a fine Celtic rage, and then for days afterwards was in a penitential mood that shamed the poor old Irish ghost into complete and grovelling subjection. What she saw in the mirror over her dressing-table warned her that if she did not keep a pretty firm grip tonight on the throat of that wild Irishman who had got into the family-tree ages before the twig represented by herself appeared, Mrs. Smith-Parvis was reasonably certain to hear from him. A less captious observer, leaning over her shoulder, would have taken an entirely different view of the reflection. He (obviously he) would have pronounced it ravishing.