The place was dreary and dilapidated, with a partly shuttered front. The green-stained walls and a mask of ivy gave the place a resemblance to a large ivy-grown tomb. Charles’s spirits were depressed as he looked at it. There was something so wan and melancholy in its appearance that his high anticipations rapidly faded. In the face of that reality he could no longer picture a silver-haired gracious old lady welcoming Sisily with tears in her eyes for the sake of her dead mother. The human qualities of warmth and tenderness did not accord with that chilling neglected exterior.
He approached the door, his sensations painful enough in the mingled tumult of suspense, hope, and fear. There was no bell, only an old-fashioned brass knocker, which, with a kind of surly stiffness, resisted his attempt to use it. He managed to wrench one knock out of it, and left it suspended in the air.
There was a considerable pause before the knock was answered. Then the door was opened by a pretty slim servant girl. There was nothing funereal in her appearance except her black dress, and that was set off by a coquettish white apron. She looked at the young man with questioning bright eyes, as though surprised at his appearance there.
“Does Mrs. Pursill live here?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” she replied with a trace of hesitation.
The barometer of hope went up several degrees in Charles’s breast. “Could I see her?” he eagerly said.
“I’ll ask, sir. What name, please?”
“No name. Mrs. Pursill would not know it. But my business is very important.”
The maid looked at him doubtfully, and left him standing there while she disappeared within. From the depth of the house an agitated feminine murmur reached him through the half-open door. “What’s he like, Ruby?” “Quite the gentleman, miss—young and very good-looking.” A pause, and the first voice rejoined: “Show him into the drawing-room, and ask him to sit down.”
The maid came back with this message, and took Charles into a large sombre room. She gave him a fluttered glance of coquetry as she offered him a chair, as though she would have liked to linger with such an unusual visitor, then went out softly, closing the door behind her.