Yes, he was decidedly glad that he had not brought his mule.  As he approached nearer and nearer to the Countess’s front-door his arguments in favour of the visit grew more and more ridiculous.  Useless to remind himself that he had once danced with the Countess at the municipal ball, and amused her to the giggling point, and restored her lost fan to her.  Useless to remind himself that he was a quite exceptional young man, with a quite exceptional renown, and the equal of any man or woman on earth.  Useless to remind himself that the Countess was notorious for her affability and also for her efforts to encourage the true welfare of the Five Towns.  The visit was grotesque.

He ought to have written.  He ought, at any rate, to have announced his visit by a note.  Yet only an hour earlier he had been arguing that he could most easily capture the Countess by storm, with no warning or preparations of any kind.

Then, from a lateral path, a closed carriage and pair drove rapidly up to the Hall, and a footman bounced off the hammercloth.  Denry could not see through the carriage, but under it he could distinguish the skirts of some one who got put of it.  Evidently the Countess was just returning from a drive.  He quickened his pace, for at heart he was an audacious boy.

“She can’t eat me,” he said.

This assertion was absolutely irrefutable, and yet there remained in his bold heart an irrational fear that after all she could eat him.  Such is the extraordinary influence of a Palladian facade!

After what seemed several hours of torture entirely novel in his experience, he skirted the back of the carriage and mounted the steps to the portal.  And, although the coachman was innocuous, being apparently carved in stone, Denry would have given a ten-pound note to find himself suddenly in his club or even in church.  The masonry of the Hall rose up above him like a precipice.  He was searching for the bell-knob in the face of the precipice when a lady suddenly appeared at the doors.  At first he thought it was the Countess, and that heart of his began to slip down the inside of his legs.  But it was not the Countess.

“Well?” demanded the lady.  She was dressed in black.

“Can I see the Countess?” he inquired.

The lady stared at him.  He handed her his professional card which lay waiting all ready in his waistcoat pocket.

“I will ask my lady,” said the lady in black.

Denry perceived from her accent that she was not English.

She disappeared through a swinging door; and then Denry most clearly heard the Countess’s own authentic voice saying in a pettish, disgusted tone: 

“Oh!  Bother!”

And he was chilled.  He seriously wished that he had never thought of starting his confounded Universal Thrift Club.