Lady Lancaster caught her breath with a gasp as if someone had thrown cold water over her. She turned to the maid; exclaiming, in a shrill whisper:
"Elise, that is not West's American niece. You are trying to deceive me!"
"No, my lady, I am not. It is Miss West. Is she not a pretty girl?"
"But I thought," said my lady, ignoring the question, "that West's niece was a child. I am sure she told me so."
"I do not know what she told you; but this is certainly Leonora West," reiterated the maid; and then her mistress stepped over the threshold into the room, the long train of her stiff brocade rustling behind her as she walked with an air of withering majesty upon her wrinkled face.
Leonora, hearing the ominous sound, glanced around with a startled air, her hands fell from the keys, and she sprung to her feet, and stood waiting the lady's approach—not humbly, not nervously, but with that calm dignity and self-possession that seemed characteristic of her, and that seemed to belong peculiarly to her as fragrance belongs to a flower.
Lady Lancaster was not propitiated by that peculiar air. To her angry eyes it savored of defiance.
She walked on across the thick, soft pile of the velvet carpet until she was directly in front of the waiting girl, and then Leonora lifted her eyes with an air of gentle curiosity, and dropped her a graceful courtesy.
"Impertinent! I have a great mind to slap her, anyhow!" the old lady said, irately, to herself; but she kept down her spleen with a great effort of will, and said, with ironical politeness: