However, to proceed: It was exactly one month after this that Barbara Wynne, the ward of Mrs. Tilney, had come there to the boarding house. The day, like the day of Mr. Mapleson's advent, was one to be remembered. A raw wind from the eastward had risen with the morning, and well on in the afternoon rain began. Presently, as if to show what a December storm really can do in New York, it settled itself into a soaking downpour—a flood that changed before long to cutting sleet, then to a wet, clinging snow.
Toward night Mrs. Tilney's upstairs girl entered the kitchen where Mrs. Tilney waged diurnal warfare with her cook.
"There's a lady in the parlor, mum," she announced.
The term was too often vulgarly misused in Mrs. Tilney's cosmos to excite anticipation.
"A lady? How do you know?" demanded Mrs. Tilney.
"Sure, mum," replied the girl with convincing frankness, "she do look different f'm yer boarders!"
It proved, moreover, to be the truth. Upstairs in the parlor Mrs. Tilney found a slender, wan-faced woman to whose dripping skirts clung an equally rain-soaked child; and that they were persons of distinction not even their appearance could dispute. The visitor's voice, when she spoke, was low and modulated. It rang like the undertone of a bell.
"I am looking for rooms—a room," she corrected.
A shudder accompanied the words, and with a gesture of uncontrollable languor she held her hands to the coal glowing in the hearth.
The landlady debated. Transients of this sort were as little to her liking as they were rare. However, after some misgivings she showed her visitor the one vacancy. It was a top-floor bedroom just down the hall from Mr. Mapleson's. Board included, the rent would be sixteen dollars.