"Who are they?"

"Tenants. Some of them. A school in the village. Two families on Harwick Road who lost their men in winter. A doctor in Ipswich who sees patients who cannot pay him and does not know the account that keeps him solvent."

A pause. "He has never put his name to any of it. He does not want the credit. He wants the thing done."

Cesily did not say anything.

"He is not an easy man," Mrs. Price said. "He is a private man and a proud man, and he does not show you what he is at once. But what he is, when you find it, is very steady."

Cesily went to bed and did not sleep well, which was not her habit. She was practical. She did not generally have trouble sleeping. She lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling of the room that smelled of old lavender and thought about a man who paid doctor's bills and did not put his name to them, and thought that no one would notice.

The rival arrived in November, three days before the first hard frost. Her name was Lady Dorothea Hails. She was a cousin of some kind. She arrived with two trunks and a maid and the particular energy of a woman who has decided in advance that she is the most important person in any room she enters.

She was handsome. She was very handsome. She had the kind of face that rooms did not forget, and she knew it, and she wore it the way people wear weapons, with intention and practice. She found Cesily in the morning room with Edmund on the second morning.

"You are the governess," she said from the doorway.

"I am."

"He said you were competent."

She looked at Edmund, then at the ledger Cesily had been using to teach him addition, then back at Cesily. "He did not say anything else about you."

It was said precisely. It was meant precisely. Cesily understood what it was meant to say, which was: You are the kind of person a man does not mention.

"Edmund," Cesily said, "finish the column."

Edmund finished the column without looking up. He had heard the tone, too. He was five, not deaf.

Lady Dorothea came in and sat down in the chair by the window, which was the best chair in the room, and arranged herself in it. "You are from Suffolk?"

"Yes. Harwick Cross, or near it."

"And your father is dead?" A small pause. "I am sorry."

She did not sound sorry. She sounded curious. Cesily did not answer.

"It must be quite different," Lady Dorothea said, looking around the room with the air of someone complimenting their own house to a visitor, "to be in a place like this after where you have been."

"It is different."

"Yes, the park alone must be quite an impression after a hired room." She smiled. It was a beautiful smile. "I only mean that it must feel very grand."

"It is a house," Cesily said. "A very old one. The boys are comfortable in it, which is the relevant consideration."

Lady Dorothea looked at her. The smile stayed, but something behind it went still. "You are very direct."

"I try to be."

"He values that." A pause. "Or he did. He valued it in the woman before you as well. I believe she was direct also. She did not stay past Michaelmas."

The room was quiet. Edmund had stopped writing. Cesily looked at the ledger.

"Edmund," she said, "go and find Frederick. Take your coat."

He went. He looked at her once before the door closed. She did not look at him.

When he was gone, she stood and collected the ledger. "There is very little kindness in what you just said."

Lady Dorothea's chin came up. "I beg your pardon."

"You said it to make me feel small. You were precise about it. I noticed."

Cesily moved toward the door. "I am going to tell you that I noticed, leave the room, and say nothing further on the subject."

She left the room. She said nothing further on the subject.

She did not tell him. She had not decided whether to stay past Christmas, and she was not going to make that decision on the strength of a cruelty from a woman she did not know. She was going to make it on her own terms when she was ready. She went back to the boys and found them in the kitchen, where Mrs. Price had given them bread and butter with the efficiency of a woman who had been routing small people toward warmth and food for forty years.

She sat with them until supper and did not think about Lady Dorothea's beautiful face and precise smile. He found her in the library that evening.

"Dorothea told me you argued," he said.

"We did not argue."

He looked at her. He had that look again. "She said there was a disagreement."

"There was not a disagreement. A disagreement requires two positions in opposition. She said something unkind. I told her I had noticed and left the room."