Within the breakfast-room, and approachable by no other access, was a small room, known throughout the mansion, and indeed throughout the neighbourhood also, as "My Lady's Closet." This sacred retreat was an oblong room, about eighteen feet by eight; a large and lofty window occupied nearly one end of it, across which was placed a deal-dresser or table of three feet wide, filling the entire space between the walls. The whole room was lined with shelves and drawers, the former of which were for the most part sheltered by heavy crimson damask curtains. A few small tables stood scattered here and there; and the sole accommodation for sitting consisted of one high stool, such as laundresses use when ironing.
To the door of this apartment Sir Gilbert approached, and there reverently stopped; for by the law of the land, even he, though a pretty extensively privileged personage, was permitted to go no farther, unless licensed by an especial warrant from its mistress.
"My lady," he said, in the cheerful lusty voice that announces agreeable tidings,--"My lady, I have brought home company to breakfast."
"Have you, Sir Knight?" replied Lady Harrington, without turning her head, or otherwise interrupting herself in the performance of some apparently delicate process upon which she was occupied.
"I'd rather have Mrs. Bluebeard for a wife than such an incurious old soul as you are!" said the testy baronet.--"And so you have not even the grace to ask who it is?"
"Why, my dear Sir Tiger, I shall be sure to know within two minutes after Tomkins gives his passing thump to announce that he is carrying in the coffee; then why should I disturb this fairest of the Pentandria class?--my charming high-dried mirabilis?"
"The devil take you, and all your classes, orders, and tribes, to his own hothouse!--I'll be hanged if I don't lock you into your den while I breakfast with her;--you shan't see her at all!"
"Mother! mother!" exclaimed the colonel hastily, to anticipate the execution of the threat--"it is Helen Mowbray!"
"Helen Mowbray!" cried the old lady, thrusting her hot smoothing-iron on one side, and her blossom blotting-paper on the other, while the precious mirabilis fell to the ground; "Helen Mowbray!" and pushing aside the baronet by no very gentle movement of her tall and substantial person, she rushed forward, and Helen was speedily folded in a very close embrace.