Mr. Brace's card?
And on it is written in pencil: "May I see you at once? It is urgent!"
Extraordinary!
Well, "urgent" messages can't wait a week! I shall have to see him.
I said to the page-boy: "Show the gentleman up."
I don't know what can be said for a maid who, in her mistress's absence, uses her mistress's own pretty sitting-room to receive her—the maid's—own visitors.
Well, I couldn't help it. Here the situation was forced upon me—I, in my cap and apron, standing on Miss Million's pink hearthrug in front of the fern-filled fireplace, and facing Mr. Brace, very blonde and grave-looking, in his "bank" clothes.
"Will you sit down?" I said, standing myself as if I never meant to depart from that attitude. He didn't sit down.
"I won't keep you, Miss Lovelace," said the young bank manager, in a much more formal tone than I had heard from him before. "But I was obliged to call because, after I had sent off my note to you, I found I was required to leave town on business to-morrow morning early. Consequently I should only be able to speak to you about the matter which I mentioned in my note if I came at once."
"Oh, yes," I said. "And the important matter was——"