"Can I see him? Is he at home?"
"He is at home, in his private room, sir; I fancy he is busy. I'll ask if you can see him. What name shall I say, sir?"
"You can take my card in. And please say to your master that if he is busy, I can wait."
The man glanced at the card as he knocked at the door of the private room, and read the name: "Anthony Castlemaine."
"It must be a nephew from over the sea," he shrewdly thought: "he looks foreign. Perhaps a son of that lost Basil."
We have seen that Thomas Hill took in the card and the message to his master. He came back, saying the gentleman was to wait; Mr. Peter Castlemaine would see him in a quarter of an hour. So the servant, beguiled by the family name, thought he should do right to conduct the stranger upstairs to the presence of Miss Castlemaine, and said so, while helping him to take off his overcoat.
"Shall I say any name, sir?" asked the man, as he laid his hand on the handle of the drawing-room door.
"Mr. Anthony Castlemaine."
Mary Ursula was alone. She sat near the fire doing nothing, and very happy in her idleness, for her thoughts were buried in the pleasures of the past gay night; a smile was on her face. When the announcement was made, she rose in great surprise to confront the visitor. The servant shut the door, and Anthony came forward.
He did not commit a similar breach of good manners to the one of the previous day; the results of that had shown him that fair stranger cousins may not be indiscriminately saluted with kisses in England. He bowed, and held out his hand with a frank smile. Mary Ursula did not take it: she was utterly puzzled, and stood gazing at him. The likeness in his face to her father's family struck her forcibly. It must be premised that she did not yet know anything about Anthony, or that any such person had made his appearance in England. Anthony waited for her to speak.