She left the contemplation of the servant's pumps and stockings, and
began to grapple fiercely with the catch of her hand-bag.

The man, in the meanwhile, studied her with a searching gravity, and, as
it seemed, with some disapproval. The splendor of the front that his
master presented to the world had indeed intimidated poor Jane; but there
were many others upon whom it had no deterring effect at all. Some of
these brought art-books in monthly parts; others brought polish for the
piano legs. Many of them were quite as prepossessing in appearance as
Jane was; some of them were much less plain and dowdy; few of them
were so recklessly indiscreet as to betray themselves at the threshold
by exhibiting a black leather bag.

"There!" remarked Jane to the footman, "I knew I should get at it
eventually." She smiled at him with a friendly good-will; she
acknowledged him as a human being, and she hoped to propitiate him into
the concession that she herself was nothing less.

The man took her card, which was fortunately as correct as the most
discreet and contemporaneous stationer could fashion. He decided that he
was running no risk with his mistress, and "Miss Jane Marshall" was
permitted to pass the gate.

She was ushered into a small reception-room. The hard-wood floor was
partly covered by a meagre Persian rug. There was a plain sofa full of
forbidding angles, and a scantily upholstered chair which insisted upon
nobody's remaining longer than necessary. But through the narrow door
Jane caught branching vistas of room after room heaped up with the
pillage of a sacked and ravaged globe, and of a stairway which led with a