Mary Defoe.”
He wrote a curt reply, that he was too busy, then, thinking better of it, tore that up, and wrote another one, accepting.
He was annoyed with her and her persistence, but, after all, she was Frankie’s sister, and the arbiter of Frankie’s fate.
Punctually at four he presented himself at the front door of the dismal old house, and was admitted by a lean, elderly maid. She showed him into the same enormous sitting-room with shrouded furniture.
“Miss Defoe will be down in a minute,” she said, severely.
The place had a sort of chill magnificence which impressed him; he was fond of magnificence, anyway. Minnie increased in importance through being able to receive him in such an environment. He had been inclined to think her very ordinary, an opinion not to be held of the niece of such a drawing room.
It was the stillest house imaginable. Not a sound of any sort. He sat uneasily on a mammoth sofa, with nothing to hear, nothing to see but pictures muffled in netting, nothing that he cared to think about. His watch had gone long ago, and the marble clock on the marble mantelpiece had stopped....
At last there was a faint rustle overhead, and then the sound of very slow steps on the stairs, and in a minute Minnie entered, leading by the arm a frail little old woman in black silk, a nervous, pampered shadow of former elegance.
And this old lady remained in the room until Lionel went away. She was polite enough in her own peculiarly unpleasant way, and she evidently regarded his visit as a call upon herself, a compliment which she appreciated. Tea was served, very weak tea, too, with limp little biscuits; the old lady chattered banal and ill-humoured comments on news of the day, and at last the room began to grow dark, and Lionel took his leave.
She rose and held out a feeble old claw.