Reason now confirmed instinct.
And Claudia was entirely too self-willed and high-spirited to submit to either insult or degradation.
She instantly resolved to demand of Lord Vincent the immediate dismissal of this woman, and to keep her own rooms until her demand was complied with.
This, in fact, was the only truly dignified course of conduct that, under the circumstances, Claudia could have pursued.
With this resolution she withdrew from the drawing rooms, and went upstairs to seek her own apartment.
Here the very accident happened that we mentioned as being so likely to happen to any newcomer to the castle.
As she reached the great hall on the second floor she looked around upon the many doors that opened from its four walls into the many suites of apartments that radiated from it, as from a common center, to the outer walls of the castle keep.
But which was her own door she was puzzled for a moment to decide.
The chandelier that hung from the ceiling gave but a subdued light that helped her but little.
At last she thought she had found her own door; she judged it to be her own because it was partly open and she saw, through the vista of the three rooms, the little coal fire that burned dimly in the last one.