"I can easily go away, madam, and call at a more convenient season," said Isla quietly.
Her eyes, becoming accustomed to the half-light, now discerned quite clearly on the couch the figure of a middle-aged woman, half-sitting, with a silk shawl about her shoulders, and a trifle of lace--a so-called boudoir cap--resting on her elaborately dressed hair.
"Bring a chair forward and sit down. I'm not strong. I am obliged to lie down all the afternoon. Did Madame Vibert tell you what I really required? She keeps sending me the most tiresome and impossible people--fools, in fact. Are you a fool? Come and tell me."
Isla carried over one of the gilt-brocade chairs, thinking at the same time that it was a little service the French maid ought to have rendered to a caller before she left the room.
"I don't see you very well. Will you ring for Fifine to draw up one of the blinds a little?"
"I can do it myself," said Isla promptly, "if you will tell me which one."
Mrs. Bodley-Chard indicated the window at the end of the room, and Isla very quickly caused a little light to shine in the darkness. The trim lines of her figure were silhouetted against the clear glass of the window, and Mrs. Bodley-Chard looked keenly at her face, when she came back, to see whether it corresponded with the distinction of the figure.
"You are different. Sit down and tell me what that viper, Madame Vibert, told you about me."
"She told me very, very little indeed, Mrs. Chard. Only that you wished a sort of companion-housekeeper. I could act as that, I think, though Madame Vibert as good as told me this morning I had no market value."
Isla had no hesitation in making this damaging statement. As yet she was only at play. In her purse she had sixteen pounds of good money, which, she had calculated, would keep her in modest comfort at Agnes Fraser's for at least two months. And surely in the course of two months among all the teeming millions of London she would find something to do.