One of the servants addressed him as he was leaving the schoolroom. The landlady’s boy was waiting in the hall, with a message from his lodgings.
“Now then! what is it?” he asked, irritably.
“The lady wants you, sir.” With this mysterious answer, the boy presented a visiting card. The name inscribed on it was—“Miss Jethro.”
She had arrived by the train, and she was then waiting at Alban’s lodgings. “Say I will be with her directly.” Having given the message, he stood for a while, with his hat in his hand—literally lost in astonishment. It was simply impossible to guess at Miss Jethro’s object: and yet, with the usual perversity of human nature, he was still wondering what she could possibly want with him, up to the final moment when he opened the door of his sitting-room.
She rose and bowed with the same grace of movement, and the same well-bred composure of manner, which Doctor Allday had noticed when she entered his consulting-room. Her dark melancholy eyes rested on Alban with a look of gentle interest. A faint flush of color animated for a moment the faded beauty of her face—passed away again—and left it paler than before.
“I cannot conceal from myself,” she began, “that I am intruding on you under embarrassing circumstances.”
“May I ask, Miss Jethro, to what circumstances you allude?”
“You forget, Mr. Morris, that I left Miss Ladd’s school, in a manner which justified doubt of me in the minds of strangers.”
“Speaking as one of those strangers,” Alban replied, “I cannot feel that I had any right to form an opinion, on a matter which only concerned Miss Ladd and yourself.”
Miss Jethro bowed gravely. “You encourage me to hope,” she said. “I think you will place a favorable construction on my visit when I mention my motive. I ask you to receive me, in the interests of Miss Emily Brown.”