In fact, she had written her own name—Angela Marsden Messenger.
She blushed violently.
"How stupid of me! I was thinking of the heiress—they said it was her name."
She carefully effaced the name, and wrote under it, "A. M. Kennedy."
"That's better. And now come along. A good joke, too! Fancy their astonishment if they had come to read it!"
"Does she often come—the heiress?"
"Never once been anigh the place; never seen it; never asks after it; never makes an inquiry about it. Draws the money and despises it."
"I wonder she has not got more curiosity."
"Ah! It's a shame for such a property to come to a girl—a girl of twenty-one. Thirteen acres it covers—think of that! Seven hundred people it employs, most of them married. Why, if it was only to see her own vats, you'd think she'd got off of her luxurious pillows for once, and come here."
They entered a great hall remarkable at first for a curious smell, not offensive, but strong and rather pungent. In it stood half-a-dozen enormous vats, closed by wooden slides, like shutters, fitting tightly. A man standing by opened one of these, and presently Angela was able to make out, through the volumes of steam, something bright going round, and a brown mess going with it.