The money would be paid her at the house.
'Where is it?' she asked.
'No. 60, Park Lane.'
And her informant added that she must go nicely—at least neatly—dressed; and she hurried home with a lighter heart. Distasteful though the position and occupation, it was at least a beginning, and no one knew aught of her or her antecedents.
Next night she attired herself with care, gracefully, and, perhaps, artistically, in a soft and clinging lace-trimmed dress of creamy Indian muslin. It was perhaps rather too much for the rôle she had to play; but it was one of her best costumes, with lace at her white slender throat, and shading her bare and very lovely arms, while her only ornament was a single white rose in her breast. So, gloved, shawled, and with her roll of music, she drove away in a 'growler,' the last words she heard being expressions of admiration at her appearance from Ellinor and Mrs. Fubsby.
On past the Marble Arch, and into that aristocratic line of varied and strange-looking houses, Park Lane, which, in the time of Queen Anne, was generally known as 'the lane leading to Tyburn,' where the gallows bore its ghastly freight.
'Number sixty,' she again told her cabman, when he suddenly pulled up, and she now remembered that she had omitted to ask to whose house she was going. Though she ought to have been there among, or prior to, the first arrivals, the position was so new to her that she was a little late, and already several carriages were on the line before her, 'setting down,' at a lighted portico, duly furnished with a striped canopy and carpeted steps. Thus, during the brief pause that ensued, she was enabled to see that it was a stately house she was bound for. Though October, the night was fine, and the windows were open. She obtained, through them, a glimpse of a splendidly-furnished double drawing-room, with blue silk curtains festooned within an arch; already several guests were gliding to and fro, and the fragrance of flowers and perfumes was wafted outward on the night air.
A painted and partially curtained verandah overhung the garden—a verandah made like a fairy abode by shrubs and flowers, by Chinese lanterns, ottomans, and couches; and she felt a strange, spasmodic tightening of the heart, for there was a figure that seemed familiar to her hanging over a lovely girl, who was flirting languidly with her fan.
As one in a dream, she found herself deposited at the door, and ascending with her music-roll the fast crowding staircase that led to the dancing-room, attended by a footman as a guide; but the lady of the house, whoever she was, did not condescend to receive her. And her pretty bare arms were noticed as she seated herself at the piano-stool. She had too much dress 'for one in her position,' some matrons thought suspiciously, all the more so that many men remarked and admired her; but she adjusted her music and programme, bent her sweet face closely over the former, and played on, and on, and on, till her little fingers ached, oh, so wearily, into the hours of the night and the early hours of the morning.
But ere the latter came one or two episodes occurred.