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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: took up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun.
The fact to be in possession of was therefore that his old friend,
the youngest of several daughters of a poor country parson,
had, at the age of twenty, on taking service for the first time
in the schoolroom, come up to London, in trepidation, to answer
in person an advertisement that had already placed her in brief
correspondence with the advertiser. This person proved, on her
presenting herself, for judgment, at a house in Harley Street,
that impressed her as vast and imposing--this prospective
patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life,
such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel,
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