She favoured Eustace with the nearest approach to a smile of which her thin lips were capable, but regarded him with evident suspicion when she heard that he wished for a private interview. “If you are travelling in the drapery line you needn’t trouble yourself to show your patterns,” she said, decisively; “we have dealt with Grossam and Grinder for the last twenty years, and we never take goods from strangers. There are some new people on the other side of the way who may wish to deal with you, if you’ll give them long credit and take their bill for your goods, I dare say; but I don’t recommend you to trust them. When people come into a town without sixpence of capital, and try to undersell an old-established house, they have only themselves to blame if they get into the _Gazette_. However, _I_ say nothing; it’s no affair of _mine_. The increase of our business is wearing me to the grave, and I should be the last to begrudge new people a chance, however unfair _their_ way of proceeding may be.” Eustace had been quite unable to stay this torrent of indignation against the people on the other side of the street; but when Mrs. Willows paused to take breath, he informed her that he was not a commercial traveller, and that he had nothing to do with drapery, either wholesale or retail. “I very much wish to obtain a few minutes’ conversation with you in private,” he said, glancing towards the young milliners, who had honoured him with a furtive scrutiny while Mrs. Willows was not looking at them, and had returned to their work with an exaggerated appearance of industry directly they felt her cold gray eyes upon them. That important personage hesitated. It was rather an agreeable sensation to have a handsome young man pleading for a private interview, and she looked towards the other end of the shop, where her husband was displaying cotton prints to an elderly customer of the housekeeper class, with the faint hope of awakening in that gentleman’s breast some twinge of the jealousy which so often racked her own. “If you will step upstairs to the drawing-room,” she said to Eustace, “you can explain your business without interruption.” Eustace followed Mrs. Willows to an apartment on the first floor, an apartment which was made splendid by a great deal of bead-work, and by occasional glimpses of a very gaudy Brussels carpet; but the splendour whereof was somewhat subdued by chaste coverings of brown holland and crochet-work. The linendraperess seated herself in one of the holland-covered arm-chairs, and arranged the rustling folds of her stiff silk dress. Having settled herself deliberately thus, she sat looking at Eustace with her hard gray eyes, waiting for him to speak.