Lily felt a little tremor of surprise and discomfort. It was an odd coincidence that she should have seen in her dream-nightmare just such a cat as was this cat now moving so stealthily across her line of vision!
“The front door is to the right,” said the driver.
They walked along the terrace, and Lily began to feel very much distressed and worried. Supposing the Count and Aunt Cosy had gone off on a week-end visit? Would their servants have left the house entirely alone? She feared the answer to this question might easily be “Yes.”
The entrance to La Solitude was just a plain, green-painted door let into the bare house wall.
M. Popeau rang the old-fashioned iron bell-pull, and its strident tone seemed to tear across the intense stillness which enveloped them; and then they waited what seemed to all three a considerable time.
“I think,” said M. Popeau, smiling suddenly all over his fat, pale, good-natured face, “that you will be compelled to come back with me and eat that good luncheon ordered by Captain Stuart, Miss Fairfield!”
But even as he said the words the door opened slowly, and an old woman, dressed very neatly in a faded blue print dress, with a yellow silk bandana handkerchief tightly wound round her head, stood, unsmiling, before them.
M. Popeau took command.
“This young lady has just arrived from England to stay with the Comte and Comtesse Polda,” he said pleasantly.
“We did not expect the lady till the day after to-morrow. Please come this way.”