A sudden flash of intelligence and interest swept over the man’s impassive features. Then he resumed his wooden style, and flinging the door yet wider open invited me to enter.
I was shown into a small room to the left of the great entrance hall, and had to consume my own impatience for the next ten minutes as best I might. At the end of that time the servant returned.
“Come this way, madam,” he said.
He ushered me up a flight of stairs, down another flight of stairs, along a dimly-lighted gallery hung with many Rembrandts and Gainsboroughs, and suddenly opening a door ushered me into a kind of rose-coloured bower. There was a subtle warmth and perfume about the room, and the coloured light gave me for a moment a giddy and unnerved feeling.
“Miss Lindley, your Ladyship,” announced the man. The door was softly closed, indeed it seemed to vanish into a wall of tapestry.
The rose-coloured light had for an instant confused my sight, and I did not see the girl, no older than myself, who was lying back in an easy-chair, and pulling the silken ears of a toy-terrier.
When the man left the room she sprang up, flung the dog on the ground, who gave a squeaking bark of indignation, and came to meet me as if I were a dear old friend.
“Sit down, Miss Lindley. How good of dear old Madame to send you to me! And so you are the owner of that heavenly ring?”
Lady Ursula was very pretty. Her voice was like a flute; her dress was perfection; her manner almost caressing. But even there, in that rose-coloured bower, I recognised her imperiousness, and I felt that if she were crossed her sweet tones would vanish, and I should be permitted to gaze at a new side of her character.
“You have come about the ring,” she said. “Now, what do you want for it? It is a treasure, but you won’t be too extravagant in your demands, will you?”