So I went on to Wimpole Street, where I delivered the parcel, and then returned to Holborn, speculating all the way on the one momentous question, Whom did she want me to marry? Was it herself? Now I had learned in what somebody has termed the University of Adversity an art which appears to me to be of even greater practical importance than the arts that are taught at the better-endowed universities. It was the art of taking a candid and unprejudiced view of my own affairs. And, before I got back to Mr. Conder's, my facility in this art had assured me that, whatever might be the ultimate solution of the mystery, there was not, as far as she was concerned, a scintilla of love in the matter. For a few minutes I had some idea of its being a case of love at first sight on her part. But on a little reflection I saw that the quiet business-like manner in which she had asked her questions, and made the appointment, were quite inconsistent with the enthusiasm and self-forgetfulness which accompany the sentiments that arise from love.
After what seemed to me to be the longest evening I had ever known, I found myself at the door of 41 York Place.
Then a question arose that gave me keen anxiety for a minute or two. Ought I to ring or knock? To ring seemed timid--almost cowardly. Yet what sort of knock could I give? As a messenger from a shop I had no right to give other than that single knock which had often given me so much anguish. Coming on such an invitation such a knock was clearly out of place. And yet a double knock--at least a loud one--might seem presumptuous--seem imperative. So at last I gave a knock which I intended to be a very quiet double knock, but which, I am afraid, was a very queer and tremulous one, and in a minute or so the door was opened by a maid-servant.
"Is Miss Grey----" I was going, in my nervousness, to say "at home," but I checked myself and substituted the more general particle "in?"
"She will be here in a few minutes, sir. Will you walk into the parlor?"
"Sir!" I had not been addressed as such before since a time that seemed like a phase of my being in another world. She showed me across the hall into a large room that was only partly lighted by an oil-lamp on a round table, and said: