“A lady to see you, Mr. Rivers,” said Jane Anne to him, as he crossed the porch.
“Where?”
“She asked to be shown into your sitting-room, Sir,” answered Jane Anne, with great suavity of manner.
“You should not have done that!” the painter said wearily, and passed in.
The first thing that caught his eyes on entering the little parlour that he had shared with Mrs. Elles was her tear-stained handkerchief lying like a white blot on the black horsehair sofa, and her long tan-coloured gloves spread at length upon the table. If he had thought about it, he would have recollected that the gloves had not lain there when he left the room, or at any rate, were not in the same position. In the very middle of the room stood a tall commanding presence, the “Bombazine Mother”—as Mrs. Elles had insisted on calling her—the lady he had seen talking to Jane Anne in the garden last night!
One bony hand was firmly planted on the table in the neighbourhood of the gloves, the other flourished a letter in an aggressively judicial manner. The artist bowed, and waited for her to speak.
“I daresay you know my name, Sir!” she said.
“I have not the pleasure,” he answered, curtly. Her voice had a most painful effect on him.
“Poynder—Mrs. George Poynder—I am the aunt—by marriage—of the lady who has been living with you here for one calendar month! Don’t attempt to deny it, man——”
She spoke so preposterously fast that he had no opportunity of doing so. Pointing to Jane Anne, who had slunk into the room during her speech, she continued: