At that identical moment the repeated double-knock of a telegraph-boy resounded through the hall. Then came a tap at the door of Laline's sitting-room, and a slatternly little servant entered and presented a telegram addressed to "Miss Grahame."
The message ran thus:—
"Re Occult's advertisement. Come at once to 21, Queen Mary Crescent, Kensington. Photograph and letter approved."
It was with excitement not unmingled with a curious sense of trepidation that Laline got out of a hansom cab, the driver of which had had considerable trouble in discovering the narrow cul-de-sac turning which led to St. Mary's Crescent—a row of old-fashioned houses, mellowed by age and smoke to a deep crimson colour. Near them waved the tall trees of Kensington Gardens, and before their narrow green-painted doors two steps led to a walk three feet wide and a stone-paved yard, over which the wheels of Laline's cab clattered noisily, awakening the protests of more than one pet-dog from the quiet houses into which the noise from the busy thoroughfare of the High Street came only as a distant and soothing murmur.
As Laline laid her hand on the knocker of number seven, she became suddenly embarrassed as to the name of its occupant. Could she ask for Miss or Mrs. Occult?
"I have come in answer to a telegram about an advertisement," she finally announced, as the door was opened by a neatly-dressed parlour-maid, and Laline found herself in a very small square hall dimly lighted by an oil-lamp, and furnished with tapestry-hangings and two oak settles of old-fashioned make.
The servant opened the door of a room to the right of the entrance, and asked the visitor to step inside. Almost at the same moment a young lady darted down the staircase into the hall, so swiftly and suddenly as to suggest the idea that she had been on the watch for the visitor, and joined Laline at the door of the room into which she was being shown.
"It is my aunt who has sent for you," the new-comer whispered confidentially to Laline, after carefully closing the door behind her; "and I do hope she will engage you! The moment I saw your face at the door I took such a fancy to you!"
The speaker was a girl of apparently Laline's own age, well developed, and of medium height, with curiously lithe feline movements. Her dress, of yellow-green serge, was loosely draped about her and caught here and there by silver buckles, her skin was white as paper and framed in an untidy halo of silky yellow-red hair. Regular features, oddly-gleaming green-gray eyes under pale-yellow lashes, and narrow curved red lips completed an ensemble which to Laline was at once repellent and attractive.
"If this was the niece, what would the aunt be?" she asked herself, fascinated by the strange brightness of the girl's eyes. But, as Laline gazed, her new acquaintance suddenly lowered her white eyelids, and the trick struck the other as affected and insincere.