Armed with this document I set out. The same perturbed domestic greeted me with the formula to which I was by this time growing accustomed, and when I instructed him to carry the note within doors and deliver it to his mistress, he closed the door in my face and left me to await an answer on the steps. The position was anything but comfortable. It was a bright day, and a good many people were abroad, considering how quiet the street generally was. I felt as if everybody who passed was completely aware of my discomfiture. Not a nurse-maid went by with her charge who did not, to my distempered fancy, know my business, and look meaningly at me in appreciation of my position. By-and-by the door opened, and the servant asked me to step inside. I had been cooling my heels on the steps for full five minutes, and was by this time as little self-possessed as I have ever been in my life. I followed the man blindly into the familiar morning-room, and was there left alone for another ten minutes. Anger was taking the place of bewilderment, and I was striding rapidly up and down the room when Lady Rollinson entered. The weather was still cold, but she carried a fan in her hand, and moved it rapidly as she walked into the room and sank into a chair. I bowed with a stiff inclination of the head, but she made no return to my salute. “I hope, Captain Fyffe,” she said, “that you will make this interview as brief as possible. It is likely to be painful to both of us, but you have insisted on it. I do not see what purpose it can serve, but it is just as well that you should understand that I am finally determined.” It was plainly to be seen that she was painfully agitated; and though she had done her best to abolish the traces of the fact, I could see that she had been crying. “You are finally determined!” I echoed, and I dare say my manner was foolish enough. “But what are you finally determined about?” “I am finally determined,” she responded, “that everything is over between us; and until the count returns and learns the dreadful truth, everything, so far as my influence can go, is over between you and Violet.” “What is the dreadful truth?” I asked. “I give you my word that I am utterly in the dark.” Now Lady Rollinson was a dear old woman, and I had had a warm affection for her. On her side she had treated me from the beginning of our acquaintance almost as if I had been her son; and hitherto there had been nothing but the most friendly and affectionate sentiment between us. But I began to get angry, and I dare say I spoke in a tone to which she had been little accustomed. She cast an indignant glance at me, and fanned herself at a great rate for a full minute before she answered. “Come,” I repeated more than once; “what is this dreadful truth? Surely I have a right to know it.”