“Wrong. I am only his uncle’s widow. Come under the chandelier.”
Lally came forward hesitatingly, and stood under the great chandelier where a dozen wax candles burned mellowly from a forest of tall unlighted ones. The soft glow fell upon Lally’s face and figure. She was thin, and there was a tremulous anxiety on her features; but in her mourning dress, with a red flush on her dark cheeks, and a bright light in her velvety black eyes, she was very pretty, with a dark gipsy beauty that seemed to startle Mrs. Wroat.
“The very image of poor Clara,” muttered the old lady, “and the very image of what I was at her age. There, Peters, if you want to see how I looked in my youth, look at that girl.”
However Mrs. Wroat might have looked in her far-past youth, she looked now like a malignant old fairy in her gown of black velvet, and with her cloak of scarlet velvet drawn around her shoulders. Her diamonds were not brighter than her eyes, whose keen and piercing glances tried to read Lally’s soul.
“Peters,” said the old lady, abruptly, “give the girl that copy of the advertisement.”
The maid silently handed the slip of paper to Lally, who read it in deepening amazement.
“Is this an advertisement for me, madam?” she demanded. “I am Lally Bird. Are—are you ‘M. W.?’”
“Of ‘Mount street, London?’” finished the old lady. “Yes, I am ‘M. W.’—Maria Wroat.”
“And you were about to advertise for me, madam? I—I don’t understand. Or, is there some other Lally Bird?”
“No danger of that,” said Mrs. Wroat. “There were never two women in this world so silly and moonstruck as your mother—never two women who named their girls Lalla Rookh. Pah! What a name! But for fear your mother was not the only goose in the world who married a Bird, just answer me a few questions. What was your father’s name, and what was his business?”