Annie Owen, our Malory maid, peeped in at the door—came in, looking frightened and important, and closed it before she spoke. She was turning something about in her fingers.
"What is it, Anne?" I asked.
"Please, miss, there's an old gentleman downstairs; and he wants to know, ma'am," she continued, now addressing mamma, "whether you'll be pleased to see him."
Mamma raised herself, and looked at the girl with anxious, startled eyes.
"What is that you have got in your hand?" I asked.
"Oh! I beg your pardon, ma'am; he told me to give you this, please." And she handed a card to mamma. She looked at it and grew very pale. She stood up with a flurried air.
"Are you sure?" she said.
"Please, ma'am?" inquired the girl in perplexity.
"No matter. Ethel, dear, it is he. Yes, I'll see him," she said to the girl, in an agitated way; "show him up. Ethel, it's Harry Rokestone—don't go; he is so stern—I know how he'll speak to me—but I ought not to refuse to see him."
I was angry at my mother's precipitation. If it had rested with me, what an answer the savage old man should have had! I was silent. By this time the girl was again at the hall-door. The first moment of indignation over, I was thunderstruck. I could not believe that anything so portentous was on the eve of happening.