Cuckoo ran to dress herself.  It was seldom indeed that she stirred out in the morning, so seldom that that alone was an experience.  Arrived in the bedroom, she pounced mechanically on rouge and powder, and was about to decorate herself when she suddenly paused with outstretched hands.  She was going out into the bright wintry sunlight, and she was going to the doctor’s house, full, perhaps, of those smart patients of whom Valentine had once spoken to her.  What sort of an apparition would she be among them?  She dropped her hands, hesitating.  Then she turned to a cupboard, drew out the one famous black gown, and put it on.  She crowned her head with Julian’s hat, hid her hands in black silk gloves, pulled down her veil and seized an umbrella.  Somehow Cuckoo vaguely connected respectability with umbrellas, although even the most vicious are fain to carry them in showery London.  Then she looked at herself in the glass and wondered if her appearance were deceptive enough to trick the sharp eyes of the patients.  The glance reassured her.  She seemed to herself an epitome of black propriety, and she set forth with a more easy heart.  As she walked, her mind ran on before, seeking what this summons meant and debating possibilities without arriving at conclusions.  At the end of Harley Street her walk, which had been rapid, achieved a ritardando and nearly came to a full close before she gained the doctor’s door.  Cuckoo could be a brazen hussy.  A year ago she could scarcely be anything else.  But that love of hers for Julian had, it seemed, a strange power of undermining old habits.  It laid hands upon so many perceptions, so many emotions, with which it should surely have had nothing to do, and made subtle inroads upon every dark corner of the girl’s nature.  From it came this ritardando.  For Cuckoo was filled with a very human dread of exposing Doctor Levillier to misconception by her appearance in the midst of his patients.  Had it been late afternoon instead of morning her fortitude would certainly have been greater, and might even have drawn near to impudence.  But the clear light of approaching noontide set her mind blinking with rapid eyelids, and when she actually gained the street door her discomfort was acute.

As she put up her hand to touch the bell the door opened softly and a stout Duchess issued forth.  Cuckoo didn’t know she was a Duchess, but she quailed before the plethoric glance cast upon her, and her voice was uneven as she asked for the doctor.

“Have you an appointment, ma’am?” asked Lawler, who did not recognize her behind her black veil.

“I was asked to come,” Cuckoo murmured.

“What name, ma’am?”

“Cuck—­Miss Bright.”