"I guess we'll make old Mrs. Butterick give us some lunch first. Are you hungry?" He opened the hall door and stood aside to let her enter.
"Yes, frightfully. I suppose it was the drive."
"All right, just a second; you go round there through the hall to the left—fine old hall, isn't it?—and the first door on the left, that's the dining-room. I shan't be long. I just want to see about getting this filthy coloured taxi out of the light and tell the gardener to get the chauffeur a meal—you wait in the dining-room."
He closed the door again. Sally stood for a moment looking about her. The old square panelling of oak—black with age—the huge open grate with its logs of wood ready for the burning, the ornaments of pewter—old pewter jugs, old pewter plates with coats of arms embossed upon their surface, all the perfection of it awed her and, with a momentary wave of depression that beat over her feelings of admiration, she felt an interloper in a place that was beyond her wildest dreams of avarice. It was with no little sense of reluctance, even though the anticipation of meeting any one never for the moment entered her head, that she made her way slowly to the dining-room, hoping every moment to hear his footsteps following her—giving her, so it seemed, the right to her presence in so luxurious a place. No wonder he loved it. And then, the thought struck at her, would it be any wonder if he re-purchased, as he had said he had the right to do? And if that were to happen—he was making his name now, and it well might—would he bring her here to live with him? Would he perhaps make her his wife? Or would they live, as they lived together now? Or—and the thought drove blood that was cold and chilling through her veins—would it be impossible for them to live so publicly in such a way, and would he then live alone?
She tried to shake herself free of this mood of conjecture, took the handle firmly within her fingers, opened the door, and walked into the room.
The next moment her heart leapt, a live thing within her, then lay still. Every action through her body seemed suspended. She scarcely realized her physical existence at all. It was as though she were conscious only of mind, mind that was filled with perplexity, astonishment, consternation, a mind that was being buffeted by winds from every quarter of the compass of sensation. And through it all, she struggled to drive words together into sentences, words, that like a flock of witless sheep upon open ground, would not be driven, but ran this way and jumped that in a frolicsome imbecility of purpose.
And there she stood, just within the room, while Mrs. Durlacher with slowly uplifting eyebrows of amazement rose gradually from the comfortable armchair to her feet.
"Aren't you Miss—Miss—?" She tried to catch the name in the air with her fingers.
"Bishop," said Sally, with dry lips.
"Yes, of course, Bishop—Miss Bishop?"