it
was almost a pounce--of the one small figure restlessly measuring its
length.

The dash checked itself within a yard of Margaret, and the lady--a
stranger--held back long enough to stamp on her hostess a sharp
impression of sallowness, leanness, keenness, before she said, in a
voice that might have been addressing an unruly committee meeting: "I
am Lady Caroline Duckett--a fact I found it impossible to make clear to
the young woman who let me in."

A warm wave rushed up from Margaret's heart to her throat and forehead.
She held out both hands impulsively. "Oh, I'm so glad--I'd no idea--"

Her voice sank under her visitor's impartial scrutiny.

"I don't wonder," said the latter drily. "I suppose she didn't mention,
either, that my object in calling here was to see Mrs. Ransom?"

"Oh, yes--won't you sit down?" Margaret pushed a chair forward. She
seated herself at a little distance, brain and heart humming with a
confused interchange of signals. This dark sharp woman was his
aunt--the "clever aunt" who had had such a hard life, but had always
managed to keep her head above water. Margaret remembered that Guy had
spoken of her kindness--perhaps she would seem kinder when they had
talked together a little. Meanwhile the first impression she produced
was of an amplitude out of all proportion to her somewhat scant
exterior. With her small flat figure, her shabby heterogeneous dress,
she was as dowdy as any Professor's wife at Wentworth; but her
dowdiness (Margaret borrowed a literary analogy to define it), her
dowdiness was somehow "of the centre." Like the insignificant emissary
of a great power, she was to be judged rather by her passports than her
person.

While Margaret was receiving these impressions, Lady Caroline, with
quick bird-like twists of her head, was gathering others from the pale
void spaces of the drawing-room. Her eyes, divided by a sharp nose like
a bill, seemed to be set far enough apart to see at separate angles;
but suddenly she bent both of them on Margaret.

"This _is_ Mrs. Ransom's house?" she asked, with an emphasis on the
verb that gave a distinct hint of unfulfilled expectations.

Margaret assented.

"Because your American houses, especially in the provincial towns, all
look so remarkably alike, that I thought I might have been mistaken;
and as my time is extremely limited--in fact I'm sailing on Wednesday--"

She paused long enough to let Margaret say: "I had no idea you were in
th