"When my father died I was left with very little money and no special training.

Result--I spent a hateful year as nursery governess to a couple of detestable brats.

Then Aunt Gertrude invited me here on a visit--and that visit has prolonged itself up till the present moment.

She finds me very useful, you know," she added cynically.
"Yes, I suppose she does," answered Nan, with some embarrassment.

She felt no particular desire to hear a resume of Miss Carson's past life.
There was something in the girl which repelled her.
As though she sensed the other's distaste to the trend the conversation had taken, Miss Carson switched briskly off to something else, and by the time Lady Gertrude returned with Roger, suggesting that they should go in to lunch, Nan had forgotten that odd feeling of repulsion which Isobel had first aroused in her, and had come to regard her as "quite a nice little thing who had had rather a rotten time." This was the impression Lady Gertrude's niece contrived to make on most people.