But, simple as the affair appeared to her, it did not apparently strike others in just the same light. The trim and prim lackey who opened the door of the great mansion to the plainly dressed girl stared at her in a most disconcerting way.
The professor was at home; but the professor was engaged in dining. The professor was not to be interrupted on any pretext whatever, when he was at table. Would she leave her card? This last inquiry with a supercilious sneer which, if anything had been needed to put Octave “on her mettle” would certainly have accomplished it.
“My card will be of no use, in this case. My business is personal; and I will come in and await the professor’s leisure.” She coolly moved forward into the vestibule, and, much as he would have liked to do so, the servant did not dare refuse her entrance. Nor was he wholly to be blamed for this reluctance. He knew, if she did not, that his master’s hours of recreation were few, and of labor many; and that each had a distinct and weighty money value. The lackey’s business was to serve and save his employer, and in his eyes there seemed nothing which a chit of a girl, arriving in a cheap railway hack, could possibly want with the great man except to beg for something or other.
“Shall I wait here?” asked Octave, as the man allowed her to stand just within the entrance and made no effort to give her a seat.
“If you will tell me your business, I will see if you can have an audience; that is, when the professor has finished dining,” replied the servant, loftily.
“It would be impossible for you to understand my business,” replied the visitor with a hauteur fully equalling Jeems’s own. And, as he stared at her afresh nor made any motion toward serving her, she walked into the first room she saw open, and quietly sat down to await developments.
“Well, I like this!” exclaimed the quick-tempered girl; “I wonder what Fritzy Nunky would say!”
One Painting Especially Captivated Her Attention. Page [175].
Then she began to look about her, and soon forgot the awkwardness of her situation, the lateness of the hour, and all the other disagreeable things which she should have remembered. The walls of the reception room were lined with pictures, and there was nothing which had so intense a fascination for Octave as a beautiful picture. She knew at a glance that these were such; though she could not have told why, save that they reminded her of those she had delighted in among the great galleries abroad, where she had so often gone with her Uncle Fritz.