The hansom drew up at the door and the traveller from Southampton Row flung away his cigar end, alighted, and ran up the three steps leading to the porch. He rang the bell, and then stood wondering at the luxuriance of the wisteria that overspread the porch, and contemplating the hind hocks of the cab-horse which had been fired.
What he was about to do or say when he found himself in the presence of his enemy was not very clear to the mind of Mr Bevan. What did occur to him was that George Lambert would have the advantage over him in the interview, seeing that he would be in his own house--on his own dunghill, so to speak.
He might have got into the hansom and returned to town, but that would have been an admission to himself that he had committed a fault, and to admit themselves in fault, even to themselves, was never a way with the Bevans.
Presently shuffling footsteps sounded from behind the door which opened some two inches, disclosing a pale, blue eye, part of a nose, and an uncertain coloured fringe.
"What do you want?" cried a voice through the crack.
"Dear me," murmured Charles, whose curiosity was now greatly aroused by the neglected aspect of the place and the mysterious personage hidden by the door. He felt a great desire to penetrate further into the affairs of his enemy and see what was to be seen.
"Then give her my card, please. I would like to speak to her."
The person behind the door undid the chain, satisfied evidently by Bevan's voice and appearance that he was not a dun or a robber. The door opened disclosing a servant maid, very young and very dirty.
This ash-cat took the piece of pasteboard, and made a pretence of reading it, invited Charles to enter, and then closing the door, and barring it this time as if to keep him in, should he try to escape, led the way across a rather empty hall to a library.
Here she invited him to sit down upon a chair, having first dusted it with her apron, and declaring that she would send Miss Fanny to him in "a minit," vanished, and left him to his meditations.
"Most extraordinary place," said Charles, glancing round at the books in their cases. "Most extraordinary place I ever entered."
As he looked about him, he heard the youthful servant's voice raised now to its highest pitch, and calling "Miss Fanny, Miss Fanny, Miss F-a-a-anny" and dying away as if in back passages.