Miss Pengarvon, sitting at work in the Green Parlor, was suddenly startled by a loud knocking at the front entrance of the Hall. Never did that sound fall on her ears without recalling with startling vividness that December night, now twenty years ago, when she who knocked was repulsed with contumely, and left to find a winding-sheet in the darkness and the snow.
A few moments later, Lucy Grice, after a preliminary tap at the door, entered the Parlor, carrying the stranger's card gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. It was the first time she had ever seen such an article, and she was at a loss to know the use or meaning of it.
"A gentleman at the front door, ma'am, asked me to give you this," said Lucy. "He says he wants to see you very perticlar."
Miss Pengarvon took the card and peered at it through her spectacles.
"The name is altogether strange to me," she muttered. "What possible business can have brought him here?" Then to the girl, after a moment's cogitation, "You may show the gentleman in."
Accordingly Lucy ushered the stranger into the Green Parlor and shut the door upon the two. Then she retired a little way down the corridor and listened. The stranger's voice reached her as a low, deep murmur, but the walls were too thick and she was too far away to distinguish anything that was said. Then presently she heard Miss Pengarvon's voice as if in reply, rising gradually to a pitch of shrillness and vituperative energy such as she would not have believed possible in the mistress of Broome. Involuntarily Lucy crept further away, and it was as well she did so, seeing that before the stranger had been more than five minutes in the room, the door was flung suddenly open.
"Leave my house this instant, and never dare to set foot in it again," exclaimed Miss Pengarvon in her harshest tones.
"Then you positively refuse to give me the information I ask for?" said the stranger, as if urging some point for the last time. "Let me beg of you to reconsider your determination."
"I have no information to give you, as I have already told you. Go; that is all I demand of you! Go!" Then, if Lucy had been there, she would have seen Miss Pengarvon with trembling fingers tear up the stranger's card and fling the fragments contemptuously at his feet.
"You may pretend not to believe what I have told you, but you are assured in your heart that it is true," he said, still speaking in the cold, level tones he had adopted throughout the interview.