The butler came almost directly.
"Did you tell Lady Hainault that I was here?" said Charles.
"My lady was told, sir."
"Tell her again, will you?" said Charles, and yawned.
Charles had time for another look at Ruskin, and another look at the gardener and his boy, before the butler came back and said, "My lady is disengaged, sir."
Charles was dying to see Adelaide, and was getting very impatient; but he was, as you have seen, a very contented sort of fellow: and, as he had fully made up his mind not to leave the house without a good half-hour with her, he could afford to wait. He crossed the hall behind the butler, and then went up the great staircase, and through the picture-gallery. Here he was struck by seeing the original of one of the prints he had seen downstairs, in the book, hanging on the wall among others. He stopped the butler, and asked, "What picture is that?"
"That, sir," said the butler, hesitatingly, "that, sir—that is the great Turner, sir. Yes, sir," he repeated, after a glance at a Francia on the one side, and a Rembrandt on the other, "yes, sir, that is the great Turner, sir."
Charles was shown into a boudoir on the south side of the house, where sat Lady Hainault, an old and not singularly agreeable looking woman, who was doing crotchet-work, and her companion, a strong-minded and vixenish-looking old maid, who was also doing crotchet-work. They looked so very like two of the Fates, weaving woe, that Charles looked round for the third sister, and found her not.
"How d'ye do, Mr. Ravenshoe?" said Lady Hainault. "I hope you haven't been kept waiting?"
"Not at all," said Charles; and if that was not a deliberate lie, I want to know what is.