"Meaning Mr. Granthope?" said Fancy airily.
"You know who I mean well enough!" was her pettish reply.
"Oh, do I?"—and Fancy, her costume now in readiness for the street, walked jauntily into the anteroom and knocked at the door. "Madam Spoll is here to see you," she called out.
"Just a moment," he answered.
Fancy, pulling her jacket behind, wriggling, and smoothing down her skirt over her hips, walked to the window and cast a glance out. Then she slammed the drawers of her desk, put a hair-pin between the leaves of her novel, straightened her pen-holders on the stand, stoppered a red-ink bottle, and marched out without looking to the left or to the right.
Madam Spoll glared at her in silence till she had gone; and then, with an agility extraordinary in so stout a woman, she sprang to the closet, opened the door and picked up an envelope lying on the floor. It had been opened. She took the letter out, gave it a hurried glance and then returned to her seat, stuffing the paper up under her basque.
The letter was short enough for her practised eye to master the contents almost at a glance. It ran:
My dear Mr. Granthope:—I hope you didn't take offense at my frankness the other day—if I was too candid don't misinterpret it and my interest in you. Sometime I may explain it more intelligently, but for the present believe me to be, Your friend, CLYTIE PAYSON.
Granthope came out after she had concealed the note. He was fully dressed and almost unrecognizable in his costume. He walked gracefully, with the light-footed stride of a mandarin, and saluted her with mock gravity. Madam Spoll stared at him with her mouth open. For a moment she did not appear to know him. Then she chuckled.
"For the land's sakes, what are you up to now, Frank? Doing the Chinese doctor's stunt and selling powdered sea-horses?"