She gave up. She told him yes, to-morrow evening; for Miss Amy would not be home then.
III
It was a nice, respectable house in a quiet street below Morningside Park. He was agreeably surprised at its respectability, for he had scented a mystery in Rosaleen’s reluctance to have him come—great poverty, perhaps, or a disreputable relative. He went into the vestibule, and looked for the bell. There it was—Humbert—; he rang; the door clicked, and he entered. An old-fashioned house, the carpeted halls were dark and stuffy; he climbed up and up, and on the fourth landing there stood Rosaleen.
She was very pale, and the hand she held out to him was cold as ice. An altogether unfamiliar Rosaleen, silent, even, it struck him, a desperate girl. She led him into the dining room.
“Excuse me just a moment!” she said. “I’ll tell—my uncle—you’re here.”
And vanished, leaving him alone. He looked about him with interest, because it was Rosaleen’s home. And he was sorry that it was such a stuffy and unlovely one. He was used to large rooms and fine old furniture, to a sort of dignity and fineness in living. This dining room, with its swarm of decorations, the crowded pictures, the scrawny plants, the flimsy and ugly varnished furniture, the sewing machine, the dark red paper on the walls, distressed him. He sat down on one of the straight chairs against the wall to wait, trying to imagine his fair Rosaleen in this setting.
In the meantime Rosaleen had hurried to knock at the door of Mr. Humbert’s room.
“Mr. Morton!” she murmured. “Here’s a young man—a—a friend of Miss Waters.... Would you like to come out and see him?”
“Presently,” the dignified voice replied, and Rosaleen hastened back.
“He’ll be in presently,” she repeated to Nick, as she returned. He had risen when she entered, and once more he took her hand. Her nervousness, her distress, filled him with pity.