Eleanor made no answer to this, and they rode on in silence for a little time. Miss Askam did not feel ‘drawn’ to Magdalen by Otho’s description of his friend. Indeed, it had the very natural effect of putting her mind into a defensive attitude with regard to the other woman. Without being any stickler for forms, she could not understand why Miss Wynter had not called upon her, perhaps on her aunt’s behalf, or why she was being thus hurried to see this wonderful penniless orphan who had no designs upon men, but who disliked and was disliked by all the other women of the neighbourhood. ‘It looks very much as if I were being taken to her on approval, for inspection,’ said Eleanor within herself. Her white teeth showed a little in a not altogether amiable smile. ‘Well, let it be so. I am committed to nothing with her. We will see what she is. I think I can sustain her inspection.’ She also reflected that Otho’s gift of character-drawing seemed to be in a very undeveloped condition, and she had more than once noticed, during her short career, that when men describe women, they very often paint them, not as they are, but as the women have chosen that they should find them; and this was very likely the case with Otho and Miss Wynter. ‘Here we are,’ observed Otho, as they turned in at the Balder Hall Lodge, rode up to the door, and found that Miss Wynter was at home. CHAPTER XIII TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-TWO Miss Strangforth’s butler threw open the door of an exquisite little upstairs sitting-room, and announced Otho and Eleanor. The latter, whose whole mind had been dwelling in anticipation on the meeting with this woman whom she disliked in advance, got a sort of jar through her nerves as, on walking into the room, she confronted, not only Magdalen luxuriously stretched in a low easy-chair by the fire, but, much more conspicuous at the moment, the figure of a man, standing on the hearth-rug, with his back to the fire. A slight shock went through her as she encountered the pair of grave and searching eyes which had been present in her mind more than once during the last twenty-four hours. It was Michael Langstroth who looked at her. Eleanor’s first feeling was an unreasoning one of disappointment. ‘He comes to see her too, then.’ The next was one of satisfaction. ‘At any rate, I shall now learn who he is.’ Then her attention was drawn to Magdalen, as the latter rose, with a slight ‘Ah!’ and advanced, saying, ‘Well, Otho, how do you do?’ Eleanor looked at her. She had a rapid general impression of a tall woman, beautiful both in face and form, and arrayed in a mouse-coloured velvet gown—a woman whose exceedingly white and finely-shaped hands held some brilliant scarlet wool and ivory knitting-needles; who had eyes which for darkness and coldness could not be surpassed, and a sweet and frigid smile.