Honora did not reply.  For at that moment they drew up at a carpet stretched across the pavement.

Unlike the mansions of vast and imposing facades that were beginning everywhere to catch the eye on Fifth Avenue, and that followed mostly the continental styles of architecture, the house of the Cecil Graingers had a substantial, “middle of-the-eighties” appearance.  It stood on a corner, with a high iron fence protecting the area around it.  Within, it gave one an idea of space that the exterior strangely belied; and it was furnished, not in a French, but in what might be called a comfortably English, manner.  It was filled, Honora saw, with handsome and priceless things which did not immediately and aggressively strike the eye, but which somehow gave the impression of having always been there.  What struck her, as she sat in the little withdrawing room while the maid removed her overshoes, was the note of permanence.

Some of those who were present at Mrs. Grainger’s that evening remember her entrance into the drawing-room.  Her gown, the colour of a rose-tinted cloud, set off the exceeding whiteness of her neck and arms and vied with the crimson in her cheeks, and the single glistening string of pearls about the slender column of her neck served as a contrast to the shadowy masses of her hair.  Mr. Reginald Farwell, who was there, afterwards declared that she seemed to have stepped out of the gentle landscape of an old painting.  She stood, indeed, hesitating for a moment in the doorway, her eyes softly alight, in the very pose of expectancy that such a picture suggested.

Honora herself was almost frightened by a sense of augury, of triumph, as she went forward to greet her hostess.  Conversation, for the moment, had stopped.  Cecil Grainger, with the air of one who had pulled aside the curtain and revealed this vision of beauty and innocence, crossed the room to welcome her.  And Mrs. Grainger herself was not a little surprised; she was not a dramatic person, and it was not often that her drawing-room was the scene of even a mild sensation.  No entrance could have been at once so startling and so unexceptionable as Honora’s.

“I was sorry not to find you when I called,” she said.  “I was sorry, too,” replied Mrs. Grainger, regarding her with an interest that was undisguised, and a little embarrassing.  “I’m scarcely ever at home, except when I’m with the children.  Do you know these people?”

“I’m not sure,” said Honora, “but—­I must introduce my husband to you.”

“How d’ye do!” said Mr. Grainger, blinking at her when this ceremony was accomplished.  “I’m awfully glad to see you, Mrs. Spence, upon my word.”

Honora could not doubt it.  But he had little time to express his joy, because of the appearance of his wife at Honora’s elbow with a tall man she had summoned from a corner.

“Before we go to dinner I must introduce my cousin, Mr. Chiltern—­he is to have the pleasure of taking you out,” she said.