“Auntie,” he exclaimed, “there’s a lady in the drawing-room waiting to see you. She has been here a long time, and she would wait for you. Susan says she looks as if she were in great trouble.”
“What name did she give?” asked Christine, her mind still full of Hugh Macneillie’s illness, and a terror seizing her that some bearer of ill news had come.
Dugald Linklater handed her a card which bore a name quite unknown to her,—Mrs. Bouvery. She rose with a sigh of weariness.
“Don’t wait for me, Charlie,” she said, “I am not hungry and will interview this lady first.”
Everything in Christine’s drawing-room was in the perfection of taste, there were no bright colours; no incongruous mixtures, the prevailing tint was a quiet low-toned blue: birds sang in the window, and everywhere her love of growing plants manifested itself. Nothing could have been more restful and harmonious than the effect of the whole, and probably no one could have seemed more tranquil and self-possessed than the graceful fair-haired woman who came forward to greet her visitor, though all the time beneath the surface her restless heart was full of passionate pain.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting so long,” she said, her clear musical voice making each syllable a separate delight to the ear. As she spoke she looked wonderingly into the hard grief-worn face of the elderly lady who had risen as she entered and had coldly acknowledged her greeting.
There was an uncomfortable pause.
“Can I do anything for you?” said Christine, wondering whether her visitor had called for a subscription, or whether she was perhaps the mother of some stage-struck girl come for advice?
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bouvery, “you can listen to what I have to tell you. You have broken my daughter’s heart madam, you have ruined her life.”
Nervous terror began to fill Christine’s mind. Surely this lady must be mad. She instinctively measured the distance from the place where she was sitting to the door.