The girl who awaited him was standing by the fire. She turned as the door opened.
He had seen her once before, and recognized her as his mother's secretary.
Naturally his thoughts flew at once to his mother.
"Is anything wrong?" he asked. "Have you news from Paris? Do you want me?"
Caroline Graniger looked at him steadily.
She was a tall slip of a girl, with a thin, colourless face, and very large, impressive eyes.
Her dress was shabby and meagre; she looked, indeed, as if she had scarcely enough on for such a cold, raw night.
"I don't know whether I ought to have come to you, Mr. Haverford," she said, "but I'm in great trouble, and as I've no one to whom I can go, and I don't quite know what to do, I thought of you."
She spoke in a staccato kind of way. The voice was rather disagreeable to Haverford.
"I shall be very glad to help you if I can," he said coldly; and then he waited for her to say more.