“The end is near!” sighed the old lady—“very near!”
Peters and Lally looked at the old lady with a sudden keenness of vision. Her hooked nose and pointed chin seemed sharper than usual. Her black eyes were more piercing and lustrous than was their wont; her features were pinched; and over all her face was spread an ominous gray pallor that told to the experienced eyes of Peters that the diseased heart was not properly performing its functions.
Peters turned and looked from the window with tears in her eyes. Her heart echoed those sad words: “The end is near!”
In due time the cab came to a halt in Mount street, Grosvenor Square, before the stately and somewhat old-fashioned mansion which had been the home of Mrs. Wroat for more than half a century. It was a double house, with parlors on either side of a wide hall, and was built of brick with stone copings and lintels, and possessed a pretentious flight of steps guarded by stone lions, and a great oriel window projecting from the drawing-room.
The front door of this house opened as the cab drew up, and a footman and a boy came down the steps and assisted their aged mistress to alight and enter the house. Lally and Peters came after, and Mrs. Wroat was taken to her own room, one of the rear parlors on the first floor, which she had appropriated twenty years before as her bed-chamber.
Out of doors the September air was mild, but in this room of Mrs. Wroat a sea-coal fire was burning in the grate, and its genial heat in that great house was not unpleasant. A crimson carpet covered the floor; crimson damask curtains half draped the wide windows that looked out upon a small square garden; and crimson-hued easy chairs and couches were scattered about the room in profusion.
Mrs. Wroat sank down upon one of the couches, and Peters bent over her, removing her huge scuttle-shaped bonnet and her Indian shawl. The footman and the boy were bringing in the luggage. Lally stood apart, not knowing what to do, when the housekeeper, an elderly, plain-featured Scottish woman, appeared. Mrs. Wroat beckoned the woman to come nearer to her.
“Mrs. Dougal,” she said, in a clear, loud voice, and looking affectionately at the slender, black-robed figure of Lally, “I have brought home with me my great-niece, Miss Lalla Bird, who is also my adopted daughter and heiress. I desire you to consider her as your future mistress.”
Mrs. Dougal bowed low to the young lady, and Mrs. Wroat continued:
“Let the best room in the house be prepared for her use, Mrs. Dougal—the amber room. Ah, it is ready! Show Miss Bird to it then, and see that her trunk is sent up to her. And have luncheon ready for us in half an hour or less, Mrs. Dougal. We are nearly famished.”