She took a room at the Great Northern Hotel and waited in all the day till the calling hour, except for a little excursion to a jeweller’s shop near the station, where she sold her one magnificent diamond ring for about a third of its value. At four o’clock she dressed herself beautifully and took a hansom to Queen Anne’s Mansions, where Egidia lived. She made sure of finding the novelist at home; she had heard her say she was at home on Fridays; if she was not alone she would outstay the other callers. As she drove along she looked at herself critically in the little glass in the corner of the cab.
“Talk of the empire of the mind over the body, it is nothing to that of the mind over the complexion!” she said to herself, but was pleased to see that two sleepless nights had only made her eyes larger and her face more interesting. Looks are the sinews of a woman’s war and, though she was not going to quarrel with Egidia but merely give up her lover to her, her prettiness would serve to mark and accentuate her heroism.
It was five o’clock when her cab drove under the archway and pulled up at the big door which is the portal to so many homes. Egidia lived very near the top, but she preferred to walk up, she was afraid of the lift. On the threshold of the door which was the novelist’s, as the boy who rang the bell for her informed her, she caught her dress in the mat and stumbled as the maid opened the door.
“It means something!” she said to herself.
It meant that she was nervous. She was going to do an absurd thing; make a most curiously intimate proposition to a woman she hardly knew! It was like a scene in a novel. If only Egidia would not be too matter-of-fact,—would consent to stay in the picture, as it were! As a novelist she would be apt for irregular situations, and able to enjoy and employ them.
The parlour-maid mumbled her name, which she had mumbled to her. Egidia, in a red teagown, like a handsome velvet moth, rose from a low seat to receive her, and Mrs. Elles felt like a frivolous butterfly in the somewhat freakish, bizarre habiliments in which she elected to express her personality.
“Oh, it is you!” exclaimed the novelist, her lips breaking into a kind smile and her eyes diffusing cordiality, as she held out both hands.
A tall figure rose from his seat on the other side of the fireplace, and Mrs. Elles’s eyes were fixed on him while Egidia was speaking.
“So you have found your way here at last! Where are you staying? Let me introduce Mr. Edmund Rivers—Mrs. Mortimer Elles!”
Why should he not be calling on Egidia? It was the most natural thing. Mrs. Elles had never thought of this contingency, and yet she would not have had it not happen for the world. She was not a woman who would go out of her way to avoid situations. She bowed—he bowed; and then Egidia seeming by her manner to prescribe a greater intimacy, they shook hands. Oh! why was it so dark? She could not see his face.