The woman stood and looked at the house after shutting the gate, as though uncertain whether she had found what she was looking for. But the number 453, on the dingy door, could be still made out by the light of the street opposite, and she mounted the steps.
A slatternly maid opened the door, and on being asked whether Mrs. Marvell was at home, pointed curtly to a dimly lighted staircase, and disappeared.
Gertrude Marvell groped her way upstairs. The house smelt repulsively of stale food, and gas mingled, and the wailing wind from outside seemed to pursue the visitor with its voice as she mounted. On the second floor landing, she knocked at the door of the front room.
After an interval, some shuffling steps came to the door, and it was cautiously opened.
"What's your business, please?"
"It's me—Gertrude. Are you alone?"
A sound of astonishment. The door was opened, and a woman appeared. Her untidy, brown hair, touched with grey, fell back from a handsome peevish face of an aquiline type. A delicate mouth, relaxed and bloodless, seemed to make a fretful appeal to the spectator, and the dark circles under the eyes shewed violet on a smooth and pallid skin. She was dressed in a faded tea-gown much betrimmed, covered up with a dingy white shawl.
"Well, Gertrude—so you've come—at last!"—she said, after a moment, in a tone of resentment.
"If you can put me up for the night—I can stay. I've brought no luggage."
"That doesn't matter. There's a stretcher bed. Come in." Gertrude
Marvell entered, and her mother closed the door.