Heaven forbid that under any circumstances
that brand, sole heritage of my dead parents, should ever be effaced.
Then he opened the door of a charming little waiting-room, and civilly
enough bade me seat myself, and for some minutes I was left alone. I
think nearly a quarter of an hour elapsed before he reappeared with the
message that his mistress was now disengaged and would see me. I
followed the man as closely as I could through the long hall and up the
wide staircase; not for worlds would I have owned that a certain
shortness of breath, unusual in youth, seemed to impede me. At the top,
I found myself in a handsome corridor, communicating with two
drawing-rooms of noble dimensions, as they call them in advertisements,
and certainly it was a princely apartment that I entered. A lady was
writing busily at a small table at the further end of the room. As the
man spoke to her, she did not at once raise her head or turn round; she
was evidently finishing a note. A minute later she laid aside her pen
and came towards me.
"I am sorry that I could not attend to you at once, and yet you were
very punctual," she began, in a pleasant, well-modulated voice, and then
she stopped and regarded me with unfeigned surprise.
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