The
lady had given no name, and Miss Flynn hadn't seen Mrs. Churchley;
nevertheless the governess was certain Adela's surmise was wrong.
"Is she big and dreadful?" the girl asked.
Miss Flynn, who was circumspection itself, took her time. "She's
dreadful, but she's not big." She added that she wasn't sure she
ought to let Adela go in alone; but this young lady took herself
throughout for a heroine, and it wasn't in a heroine to shrink from
any encounter. Wasn't she every instant in transcendent contact with
her mother? The visitor might have no connexion whatever with the
drama of her father's frustrated marriage; but everything to-day for
Adela was part of that.
Miss Flynn's description had prepared her for a considerable shock,
but she wasn't agitated by her first glimpse of the person who
awaited her. A youngish well-dressed woman stood there, and silence
was between them while they looked at each other. Before either had
spoken however Adela began to see what Miss Flynn had intended. In
the light of the drawing-room window the lady was five-and-thirty
years of age and had vivid yellow hair. She also had a blue cloth
suit with brass buttons, a stick-up collar like a gentleman's, a
necktie arranged in a sailor's knot, a golden pin in the shape of a
little lawn-tennis racket, and pearl-grey gloves with big black
stitchings. Adela's second impression was that she was an actress,
and her third that no such person had ever before crossed that
threshold.
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