The maid went out, and was absent nearly twenty minutes. Lally began to think herself forgotten, and grew nervous, and engaged in a mental computation of her cabman’s probable charges. The maid finally appeared, however, and announced that “Missus was in her boudoir, and would see the young person.” Lally was conducted up stairs to a front room overlooking the road. This room, like the one below, was over-furnished. The wide window opened upon a balcony, and before it, half-reclining upon a silken couch, was a lady in a heavy purple silk gown, and a profusion of jewelry--a lady, short, stout, and red-visaged, with a nose much turned up at the end, and so ruddy as to induce one to think it in a state of inflammation. “Miss Bird!” announced the maid abruptly, flinging in the words like a discharge of shot, and retired precipitately. Mrs. Blight turned her gaze upon Lally in a languid curiosity, and waved her hand condescendingly, as an intimation that the “young person” might be seated. Lally sat down. Mrs. Blight then raised a pair of gold-mounted eye-glasses to her nose, and scrutinized Lally more closely, after what she deemed a very high-bred and _nonchalant_ fashion indeed. She beheld a humbly dressed girl, not past seventeen, but looking younger, with a face as brown as a berry and velvet-black eyes, which were strangely pathetic and sorrowful--a girl who had known trouble evidently, but who was pure and innocent as one might see at a glance. “Ah, is your name Bird?” asked Mrs. Blight languidly. “Seems as if I had heard the name somewhere, but I can’t be sure. Of course you have brought references, Miss Bird?” “I have only a recommendation signed by ladies in whose service I have been,” said Lally. “I have been a music-teacher, but I possess the other accomplishments you require.” She drew forth the little worn slip of paper which she had guarded as of more value to her than money, because it declared her respectable and a competent music-teacher, and gave it into the lady’s fat hands. “It is not dated very lately,” said Mrs. Blight. “How am I to know that this recommendation is not a forgery? People do forge such things, I hear. Why, a friend of mine took a footman on a forged recommendation, and he ran away and took all her silver.” Lally’s honest cheeks flushed, and her heart swelled. She would have arisen, but that the lady motioned to her to retain her seat, and so long as there was a prospect that she might secure the situation Lally would remain. “The recommendation looks all right,” continued Mrs. Blight, scanning it with her glass, while she held it afar off, and daintily between two fingers, as if it were a thing unclean. “You look honest too, but appearances are _so_ deceiving! I had a nurse girl once who looked like a Madonna, and as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but she turned out a perfect minx, artful as a cat. What salary do you expect?”