"Beppo?" asked Millie.
"Yes, he's the page-boy. After dear father died I had a butler, but he got on so badly with Mrs. Brockett that I thought it wiser to have a boy. My sister, Clarice, suggested that he should be called Beppo. He was a little astonished at first because he's really called Henry, but he's quite used to it now. Well, good-bye, dear, for the moment. I can't tell you what a relief it is to me to have you here. It simply makes the whole difference."
Millie was left alone in her glory.
At first she wandered about the room, looking at the pictures, glancing out of the windows at the bright and flashing colour that flamed on the roofs and turned the chimney-pots into brown and gold and purple, gazed at a huge picture over the marble mantelpiece of three girls, obviously the Miss Platts twenty years ago, modest and giggling under a large green tree, then unrolled the desk. She gave a little gasp of despair at what she saw. The papers were piled mountain-high, and the breeze that come from the rolling back of the desk stirred them like live things and blew many of them on to the floor. How was she ever to do anything with these? Where was she to begin? She gathered them up from the floor, and looking at the first fist-full discovered bills, letters, invitation cards, theatre programmes, advertisements, some of them months old, many of them torn in half, and many more of them, as she quickly discovered, requests for money, food and shelter. She felt an instant's complete despair, then her innate love of order and tidiness came to her rescue. She felt a real sense of pity and affection for Miss Platt. Of reassurance too, because here obviously was a place where she was needed, where she could be of real assistance and value. She piled them all on to the floor and then started to divide them into sections, invitations in one heap, begging letters into another, advertisements into another.
Strange enough, too, this sudden plunging into the intimacies of a woman whom until an hour ago she had not known at all! Many of the letters were signed with Christian names, but through all there ran an implicit and even touching belief that certainly "Victoria," "dearest Viccy," "my darling little Vic," "dear Miss Platt" would find it possible to "grant this humble request," "to loan the money for only a few weeks when it should faithfully be repaid," "to stump up a pound or two—this really the last time of asking."
Half-an-hour's investigation among these papers told Millie a great deal about Miss Platt. Soon she was deep in her task. The heavy marble clock in the big room muttered on like an irritable old man who hopes to get what he wants by asking for it over and over again.
She was soon caught into so complete an absorption in her work that she was unaware of her surroundings, only conscious that above her head Venus leered down upon her and that all the strange, even pathetic furniture of the room was accompanying her on her voyage of discovery, as though it wanted her to share in their own kindly, protective sense of their mistress. The clock ticked, the fire crackled, the sun fell in broad sheets of yellow across the hideous carpet of blue and crimson, quenching the fire's bright flames.
Ghosts rose about her—the ghosts of Victoria Platt's confused, greedy, self-seeking world. Millie soon began to long to catch some of these pirates by their throats and wring their avaricious necks. How they dared! How they could ask as they did, again and again and again! Ask! nay, demand! She who was of too proud a spirit to ask charity of any human being alive—unless possibly it were Henry, who, poor lamb, was singularly ill-fitted to be a benefactor—seemed, as she read on, to be receiving a revelation of a new world undreamt of before in her young philosophy. Her indignation grew, and at last to relieve her feelings she had to spring up from the desk and pace the room.
Suddenly, as she faced the windows to receive for a moment the warmth and friendliness of the sunlight, the door opened behind her and, turning, she saw a woman enter.
This was some one apparently between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in rather shabby black, plain, with a pale face, black hair brushed severely from a high forehead, cross, discontented eyes and an air of scornful severity.