Margaret’s soul dropped from the heights of the shadowy vaulting to the dead level of an afternoon call at Wentworth.

“A lady?  Did she give no name?”

Maria became confused.  “She only said she was a lady—­” and in reply to her mistress’s look of mild surprise:  “Well, ma’am, she told me so three or four times over.”

Margaret laid her book down, leaving it open at the description of Lincoln, and slowly descended the stairs.  As she did so, she repeated to herself:  “The longitudinal arches are elliptical.”

On the threshold below, she had the odd impression that her bare and inanimate drawing-room was brimming with life and noise—­an impression produced, as she presently perceived, by the resolute forward dash—­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.