This was the second day of new Lord and Lady Burdon's visit for the latter to make Jane Lady Burdon's acquaintance. Only that morning old butler Noble had made the mistake of turning away a Miller's Field friend who had called to see new Lady Burdon, carrying out a promise to report how baby Rollo, left behind, was getting on. "Her ladyship is seeing no one," Noble had informed her. The excellent Miller's Field friend had been too overawed by his manner to explain exactly whom it was she wished to see. She sent a note of explanation by messenger. Noble delivered it to his mistress, who read it and sent him with it to new Lady Burdon. The note was foolishly worded. New Lady Burdon, ill at ease in this house, crimsoned to think it had been read. From the outset, hostile and prepared for hostility, she had taken a sharp dislike to this old man-servant; angry and mortified, she questioned him and spoke to him as he was unaccustomed to be addressed.
It was beneath the lesson of this incident that he admitted Audrey without question. She was none of his mistress's friends. In the first place he knew all such; in the second they did not call at the impossible hour of half-past six in the evening, nor present the strange appearance--white, not very steady, faltering in voice--that she bore.
He took the news of her arrival to new Lady Burdon.
"She said your ladyship would be glad to see her."
Lady Burdon hesitated a moment. She tingled with fresh hostility against this man because she wondered whether he expected her to accept that statement or to send him again for the name. She did not know and hated him the more, and hated all the fancied resentment for which he stood, because she did not know.
Her mind sought a way out. She said with a little laugh: "Oh, I think I know. Very well."
It was very dim in the library. Above the centre of the room light stood in soft points upon a high chandelier. A fire burnt low within the shelter of the great hearth. The rest was shadow.
Lady Burdon came easily into the room, but in the doorway stopped; and Audrey, who had made a forward movement, prepared words on her lips, also stopped. There was something odd about this girl who stood there, Lady Burdon thought, and her mind ran questing the cause of some strange apprehension that somehow was communicated to it. There was something wrong, Audrey thought; and she began to tremble. For a briefest space, that was a world's space to Audrey's mind bewildered and to Lady Burdon's mind suspicious, as they went hunting through it, these two stood thus, and thus regarded one another.