“Is Mr. Melrose at home?”

As she threw back her veil, Dixon stared at her in dumb amazement.  Then she suddenly perceived behind him a tall figure advancing.  She made a few steps forward through the dimly lighted hall, and found herself within a foot of Edmund Melrose himself.

He gave a start—­checked himself—­and stood staring at her.  He wore spectacles, and was leaning on a stick.  She had a quick impression of physical weakness and decay.

Without any visible embarrassment she held out her hand.

“I am lucky to have found you at home, Mr. Melrose.  Will you give me twenty minutes’ conversation on some important business?”

“Excuse me!” he said with a profound bow, and a motion of the left hand toward the stick on which he supported himself—­“or rather my infirmities.”

Victoria’s hand dropped.

His glittering eyes surveyed her.  Dixon approached him holding out a telegram.

“Allow me,” said Melrose, as he tore open the envelope and perused the message.  “Ah!  I thought so!  You were mistaken, Lady Tatham—­for another visitor—­one of those foreign fellows who waste so much of my time—­coming to see a few little things of mine.  Shut the door, Dixon—­the man has missed his train.  Now, Lady Tatham!—­you have some business to discuss with me.  Kindly step this way.”

He turned toward the gallery.  Victoria followed, and Dixon was left in the hall, staring after them in a helpless astonishment.

The gallery lit by hanging lamps made a swift impression of splendid space and colour on Lady Tatham as she passed through it in Melrose’s wake.  He led the way without a word, till he reached the door of his own room.

She passed into the panelled library which has been already described in the course of this narrative.  On this October evening, however, its aspect was not that generally presented by Melrose’s “den.”  Its ordinary hugger-mugger had been cleared away—­pushed back into corners and out of sight.  But on the splendid French bureau, and on various other tables and cabinets of scarcely less beauty, there stood ranged in careful order a wealth of glorious things.  The light of a blazing fire, and of many lamps played on some fifty or sixty dishes and vases from the great days of Italian majolica—­specimens of Gubbio, Faenza, Caffagiolo, of the rarest and costliest quality.  The room glowed and sparkled with colour.  The gold of Italian sunshine, the azure of Italian skies, the purple of Italian grapes seemed to have been poured into it, and to have taken shape in these lustrous ewers and plaques, in their glistering greens and yellows, their pale opalescence, their superb orange and blue.  While as a background to the show, a couple of curtains—­Venetian cut-velvet of the seventeenth century, of faded but still gorgeous blue and rose—­had been hung over a tall screen.

“What marvellous things!” cried Victoria, throwing up her hands and forgetting everything else for the moment but the pleasure of a trained eye.