He set out at once. Heretofore, with the exception of Terry, women had meant little to him. But he was curious to meet this woman—curious and eager in a strangely boyish fashion. Every one who had mentioned her had spoken of her with a certain hint of fear, not untinged with adoration. He hadn't been aware how anxious he had been to meet her until her note had summoned him. He wondered whether she had any of the endearing humanity of her sister. He wondered whether what Pollock had said was true, that she looked much older than her portrait. He didn't want her to look older——
He came to the bridge across the moat and the gateway which bore the grooves in which the old portcullis used to slide. He passed through the gateway, under the tower, into the graveled courtyard of the Castle. On three sides the courtyard was loop-holed and sullen, but on the fourth modern windows and a brass-knobbed door had been let into the solid masonry. Above the door, shining down on the whitened steps, a lamp burnt in a wrought-iron socket. Several of the windows were also lighted.
His knock was answered by a gray-haired man, with the gravity of deportment which is peculiar to lawyers, undertakers and footmen. While the man went to inform his mistress, Tabs was left to note how the hall was hung with hunting trophies. Then he heard himself being requested to follow.
Having climbed a winding stair, he was shown into a room in the turret, one side of which was filled by a tall leaded window gazing westward. The landscape which it framed, hung against the darkness like a painted canvas—a far-reaching expanse of tree-dotted pasture, vague with islands of mist and rimmed by the last faint sparks of the sunset. The ceiling was heavily beamed, the furniture Jacobean, the walls paneled and hung with many generations of family portraits. In a wide hearth a fire of coals and logs was burning. In the room's center stood a carved table on which was set a massive silver lamp, casting a solitary illumination.
"Lord Taborley, my Lady."
As his name was announced, he heard the rustle of her dress, and discovered that she had been seated in a low chair by the window. She rose with a slow grace. There was something indefinably tragic and foreordained about her every movement. Maisie's name for her flashed into his mind, "The Princess Czarina Bolsheviki." It suited her exactly. In those surroundings she might have posed as Mary Queen of Scots in prison—a queen without a kingdom whose pride was unbroken. In the dimness his first impression was of her queenly gentleness.
"I can guess why you've come."
The same deep voice that had taunted him at Maisie's, only now it was no longer taunting! He noticed the way she offered him her hand, with the arm fully extended as if to hold him away from her. She was a smaller woman than he had remembered; it was the courage of her bearing that had made
her seem taller. He could not see her face distinctly; it was in shadow. But, when she turned, he caught the whiteness of her profile on the dusk, clear-cut and tranquil as a cameo. After having gazed so long at Sargent's painting, he would have recognized anywhere the rounded shapeliness of her head, the hair swept smoothly back from the calm forehead, the splendid strength of her throat and the delicate, wholly feminine half-moon of her shoulders.