“All right!” he said, and was turning away, ready to go to the back door, ready to go anywhere, so that he accomplished his mission, when the housemaid relented.
“As long as you’re here, you can come in,” she said. “This way!”
He followed her across a wide hall, with a polished floor and a fine old stairway rising from it, to a door at the farther end.
“It’s the room right in front of you when you get to the top,” she explained.
She opened the door; he went in, she closed the door behind him, and he found himself in what seemed a pitch-black cupboard. But, as he moved forward, his foot struck against a step, and he began cautiously to mount a narrow, boxed-in staircase, until his outstretched hand touched a door.
He pushed it open, and found himself in a well lighted corridor, and, facing him, a white painted door. And behind that door[Pg 445] he heard some one sobbing, in a low, wailing voice.
He stopped, rather at a loss. Then, because he would not go back, he went forward, and knocked.
“Who is it?” cried a voice.
“I came to see Mrs. Jones,” Ross replied casually.
There was a moment’s silence; then the door was opened by the loveliest creature he had ever seen in his life. He had only a glimpse of her, of an exquisite face, very white, with dark and delicate brows and great black eyes, a face childlike in its soft, pure contours, but terribly unchildlike in its expression of terror and despair.