'Please give this card to Mr Wentworth, and say I shall be greatly obliged if he will see me for five minutes.'
She appeared for a moment undecided as to whether she should shut the door in my face or do my bidding; then ungraciously moved aside for me to pass into the hall, which I unhesitatingly did. Mumbling something to herself, which, to judge by her countenance, was the reverse of complimentary to me, she left me standing on the mat, and went into a room on the right of the square hall, the stone floor of which was sparsely covered here and there with old scraps of carpet. I had just time to note that, poor and forlorn as everything looked, it was kept scrupulously clean, when I heard a man's voice, and the words: 'Did I not tell you?' uttered in a stern low voice.
'I know you did; and I told her, but she wouldn't take "No" for an answer.'
'Nonsense! Say I'm engaged; it's past the time. I have all but arranged with some one already. Get rid of her somehow, and do not disturb me again. I thought you prided yourself upon your ability to keep off intruders.'
'This one isn't like the others,' grumbled the old woman. 'She goes on hammering and hammering. However, I'll soon send her off now.'
A nice introduction this! I had not really believed that she was acting under orders, and I had too grave a reason for desiring an interview, to allow a disagreeable old woman to prevent my obtaining it. I felt that an apology ought to be made before I was 'sent off.' Advancing to the door of the room from which the voices came, and standing on the threshold, I said: 'Allow me to exonerate your housekeeper, sir' (it was really a pretty compliment to give that gaunt personification of shabbiness so sounding a title, and she ought to have been touched by it). 'I am afraid I was more pertinacious than are the generality of intruders, in my anxiety to obtain an interview.'
A gentleman sat facing me, frowning down at my card. A pen still in his hand, and the quantity of papers and pamphlets covering the large library-table at which he sat, seemed to shew that it had been no mere excuse about his being engaged. A tall, broad-chested man, with a fine massive head, and good if somewhat rugged features, looking at first sight, I fancied, about forty years of age. I saw that there were a great many books in the room, and two or three fine specimens of old carved furniture, in curious contrast with the small square of well-worn and well-mended carpet at the end of the room where he sat.