The carriage had stopped in front of an ornamental gateway, leading to a handsome suburban villa, screened from view to some extent by a tracery of branches and tree-trunks, and in a frame of towering fir-trees.
As I went up the broad white steps at the entrance, I felt my heart beat, and could not tell exactly why. Perhaps at the fancy which then came to me, that I might, within those very doors, come face to face with the naked, dark, and horrible mystery of Life!
An elderly and very stylish footman raised the door-hanging to usher us into a large sitting-room, conventionally furnished à la sécession.
In a few minutes there entered a very tall, slim, lady-like person, quietly dressed in a clinging morning gown, somewhat like a riding-habit, and followed by a little white lamb, which came treading stiffly and sometimes funnily sliding along the polished floor.
Mme. Mary welcomed Mme. Wildenhoff with smiling effusion.
“I have come to call upon you with a friend of mine: Miss Dernowicz, Mme. Wieloleska,” she said, introducing me. “I trust you will have no objection; I wanted to show her your greenhouse very much.”
“Indeed, my dear Madame, but you are doing me a pleasure. I feel so bored in this solitude, where I see nobody at all. All day long, my husband is in the greenhouse or pottering about the hotbeds; he has engaged a new gardener from Haarlem, and it is quite out of the question getting him anywhere out of doors. If you care, we shall have a look at the greenhouse at once. I tell you, if it were not for my books and studies, I really might be tempted to make away with myself.”
“And why should you not take a walk sometimes? The weather is splendid just now.”
“Oh, no! My husband won’t go out; and it would not be proper for a woman to go out alone. You know how uncharitable people are.”
“And what may you be studying, Madame?” I asked.