"I will tell mamma that you are here," she said, when they were seated; and she quitted the room again.
"Had I seen that young lady first, I should not have committed the mistake of taking you for Mrs. Chester," spoke Mr. Thornycroft in his gallantry.
Lady Ellis smiled. "That young lady is not Mrs. Chester's daughter, however. Mrs. Chester's children are considerably younger."
Anna meanwhile was going upstairs. Mrs. Chester, doing something to the inside of a bed, had her black dress covered with fluff, and her hair also. She turned sharply round when Anna entered.
"Mamma, it is Justice Thornycroft."
What with the startling announcement--for Mrs. Chester took in the news at once--and what with the recollection of her own state of attire, Mrs. Chester turned her irritability upon Anna. It was provoking thus to be interrupted at her very necessary work.
"Justice Thornycroft! What in the world possesses you to call the man that, Anna Chester?"
"Mrs. Copp called him so in her letter to me, mamma."
"Mrs. Copp's a fool," retorted the bewildered lady. "Justice Thornycroft! One would think you had been bred in a wood. Who do you suppose uses those obsolete terms now? What brings him here today?"
She put the question in a sharp, exacting tone, just as if it were Anna's business to answer it, and Anna's fault that he had come. Anna quietly went to a closet and took out Mrs. Chester's best gown.