Had Christina been in her normal health, the man's grandiloquent manner and language would have amused her. With her nerves at high tension, her limbs trembling, and her whole frame exhausted and weary, she felt only a great inclination either to flee out of the front door, or to sit down and cry. The hall, softly-carpeted and warm, fragrant with the flowers massed in great pots at the foot of the staircase, and quiet with the stillness of a well-ordered house, oppressed her. The solemn voice of a grandfather clock in the corner, had only the effect of making the prevailing silence more noticeable, and Christina experienced a wild longing to scream, or to burst into uncontrollable laughter, just to break the stillness which weighed upon her like a nightmare. "Will you come this way, please?" She started violently as the footman's voice sounded close to her. His footstep on the thick pile of the stair carpet had been quite inaudible, and she was surprised to see him once more beside her. At his bidding she rose mechanically, and followed him up the wide staircase, whose soft carpet was a bewildering novelty to the girl accustomed to the simplest surroundings, across a landing, fragrant, like the hall, with growing roses and exotic plants, into a small boudoir, in which she found herself alone. In all her twenty years of life she had never before been in a room like this room, and, standing in the centre of it, just where her guide had left her, she looked round her timidly, and drew a long breath of admiration and amazement. The murkiness of the November day that darkened the world outside, did not appear to enter into this lovely apartment, which gave Christina a sense of summer and sunshine.