I advanced slowly up the room, stopped and curtsied. Lady Pollexfen pointed out a high footstool about three yards from her chair. I curtsied again, and sat down on it. During the interview that followed my quick eyes had ample opportunity for taking a mental inventory of Lady Pollexfen and her surroundings.
She had exchanged the black dress in which I first saw her for one of green velvet, trimmed with ermine. This dress was made with short sleeves and low body, so as to leave exposed her ladyship's arms, long, lean, and skinny, and her scraggy neck. Her nose was hooked, and her chin pointed. Between the two shone a row of large white even teeth, which long afterwards I knew to be artificial. Equally artificial was the mass of short black frizzly curls that crowned her head, which was unburdened with cap or covering of any kind. Her eyebrows were dyed to match her hair. Her cheeks, even through the powder with which they were thickly smeared, showed two spots of brilliant red, which no one less ignorant than I would have accepted without question as the last genuine remains of the bloom of youth. But at that first interview I accepted everything _au pied de la letter_, without doubt or question of any kind.
Her ladyship wore long earrings of filigree gold. Round her neck was a massive gold chain. On her fingers sparkled several rings of price--diamonds, rubies, and opals. In figure her ladyship was tall, and as upright as a dart. She was, however, slightly lame of one foot, which necessitated the use of a cane when walking. Lady Pollexfen's cane was ivory-headed, and had a gold plate let into it, on which was engraved her crest and initials. She was seated in an elaborately-carved high-backed chair, near a table on which were the remains of a dessert for one person.
The Green Saloon was a large gloomy room; at least, it looked gloomy as I saw it for the first time, lighted up by four wax candles where twenty were needed. These four candles being placed close by where Lady Pollexfen was sitting, left the other end of the saloon in comparative darkness. The furniture was heavy, formal, and old-fashioned. Gloomy portraits of dead-and-gone Pollexfens lined the green walls, and this might be the reason why there always seemed to me a slight graveyard flavour--scarcely perceptible, but none the less surely there--about this room which caused me to shudder involuntarily whenever I crossed its threshold.
Lady Pollexfen's black eyes--large, cold, and steady as Juno's own--had been bent upon me all this time, measuring me from head to foot with what I felt to be a slightly contemptuous scrutiny. "What is your name, and how old are you?" she asked, with startling abruptness, after a minute or two of silence.
"Janet Holme, and twelve years," I answered, laconically. A feeling of defiance, of dislike to this bedizened old woman, began to gnaw my child's heart. Young as I was, I had learned, with what bitterness I alone could have told, the art of wrapping myself round with a husk of cold reserve, which no one uninitiated in the ways of children could penetrate, unless I were inclined to let them. Sulkiness was the generic name for this quality at school, but I dignified it with a different term.
"How many years were you at Park Hill Seminary? and where did you live before you went there?" asked Lady Pollexfen.
"I have lived at Park Hill ever since I can remember anything. I don't know where I lived before that time."
"Are your parents alive or dead? If the latter, what do you remember of them?"
A lump came into my throat, and tears into my eyes. For a moment or two I could not answer. "I don't know anything about my parents," I said. "I never remember seeing them. I don't know whether they are alive or dead."