"I can easily go away, madam, and call at a more convenient season," said Isla quietly. Her eyes, becoming accustomed to the half-light, now discerned quite clearly on the couch the figure of a middle-aged woman, half-sitting, with a silk shawl about her shoulders, and a trifle of lace--a so-called boudoir cap--resting on her elaborately dressed hair. "Bring a chair forward and sit down. I’m not strong. I am obliged to lie down all the afternoon. Did Madame Vibert tell you what I really required? She keeps sending me the most tiresome and impossible people--fools, in fact. Are you a fool? Come and tell me." Isla carried over one of the gilt-brocade chairs, thinking at the same time that it was a little service the French maid ought to have rendered to a caller before she left the room. "I don’t see you very well. Will you ring for Fifine to draw up one of the blinds a little?" "I can do it myself," said Isla promptly, "if you will tell me which one." Mrs. Bodley-Chard indicated the window at the end of the room, and Isla very quickly caused a little light to shine in the darkness. The trim lines of her figure were silhouetted against the clear glass of the window, and Mrs. Bodley-Chard looked keenly at her face, when she came back, to see whether it corresponded with the distinction of the figure. "You are different. Sit down and tell me what that viper, Madame Vibert, told you about me." "She told me very, very little indeed, Mrs. Chard. Only that you wished a sort of companion-housekeeper. I could act as that, I think, though Madame Vibert as good as told me this morning I had no market value." Isla had no hesitation in making this damaging statement. As yet she was only at play. In her purse she had sixteen pounds of good money, which, she had calculated, would keep her in modest comfort at Agnes Fraser’s for at least two months. And surely in the course of two months among all the teeming millions of London she would find something to do. Mrs. Chard gave a small, hard laugh. She had a large, uninteresting face with the unhealthy colour of the woman who takes very little outdoor exercise, and there was a lassitude about her which seemed to Isla to arise from lack of will-power rather than from lack of physical health. "It is what I do want--a common-sense woman in the house who can hold her tongue and keep her eyes on two places at once. I’m being robbed on every side. The only decent person in the house is the butler Robbins. Madame Vibert has sent me nothing but fools, who were either afraid of the servants or in league with them. Have you been out before?" "No." "Where did you come from?" "From Scotland. My father died a few months ago, and I have been left without resources." "What was he?" "My father?--oh, he was a soldier." "What rank?" Isla hesitated a moment. "He was a General," she said in a low voice then, as if afraid the fact would militate against her chance.