The stranger came forward to meet her, bowing deferentially.  He had those lithe, gliding movements which she remembered of old, when she had seen princes and dignitaries of the East creeping shoeless to her husband’s feet.

‘Will your ladyship do me the honour to grant me an interview?’ he said in very good English.  ’I have travelled from London expressly for that privilege.’

’Then I fear you have wasted your time, sir, whatever your mission may be,’ the dowager answered, haughtily.  ’However, I am willing to hear anything you may have to say, if you will be good enough to come this way.’

She moved towards the library, the butler preceding her to open the door, and the stranger followed her into the spacious room, where coals and logs were heaped high upon the wide dog stove, deeply recessed beneath the old English mantelpiece.

It was one of the handsomest rooms of the house, furnished with oak bookcases about seven feet high, above which vases of Oriental ware and varied colouring stood boldly out against the dark oak wall.  Richly bound books in infinite variety testified to the wealth and taste of the owner; while one side of the room was absorbed by a wide Gothic window, beyond which appeared the panorama of lake and mountain, beautiful in every season.  A tawny velvet curtain divided this room from the drawing-room; but there was also a strong oak door behind the curtain, which was generally closed in cold weather.

Lady Maulevrier went over to this door, and took the precaution to draw the bolt, before she seated herself in her arm-chair by the hearth.  She had her own particular chair in all the rooms she occupied—­a chair which was sacred as a throne.

She drew off her sealskin gloves, and motioned with a slender white hand to the stranger to be seated.

‘To whom have I the honour of speaking?’ she asked, looking; him through and through with an unflinching gaze, as she would have looked at Death himself, had the grim skeleton figure come to beckon her.

He handed her a visiting card on which was engraved—­

‘Louis Asoph, Rajah of Bisnagar.’

’If my memory does not deceive me as to the history of modern India, the territory from which you take your title has been absorbed into the English dominion?’ said Lady Maulevrier.

’It was trafficked away forty-three years ago, stolen, filched from my father! but so long as I have power to think and to act I will maintain my claim to that land; yes, if only by the empty mockery of a name on a visiting card.  It is a duty I owe to myself as a man, which I owe still more to my murdered father.’

’Have you come all the way from London, and in such weather, only to tell me this story?’

She had twisted his card between her fingers as she listened to him, and now, with an action at once careless and contemptuous, she flung it upon the burning logs.  Slight as the action was it was eloquent of scorn for the man.