Mrs. Tredethlyn went straight to the cottage with the old-fashioned iron gate and the ivy-bordered wall. A womanly instinct guided her, as by a kind of inspiration, to the spot where she had seen her husband so much at home with a nameless and unknown creature. An air of prim respectability pervaded the place, which Maude inspected as she waited for admission, and peered inquisitively through the iron scroll-work. There were none of the rose-coloured curtains and china flower-stands, the yelping lap-dogs and twittering birds, which Mrs. Tredethlyn had been taught to associate with those inhabitants of an outer world, in whom she perceived only overdone imitations of herself. Everything here had a prim countrified prettiness of its own; and looking across the smooth lawn, Maude saw a slender girlish figure in a cotton dress bending over a flower-bed, while a little boy stood by with a tiny watering-pot, whose contents he dribbled industriously over his own toes. Maude’s summons was responded to by an elderly woman in black. She was very grim and stern, as people who dote upon small children usually are; and she was no other than the eminently respectable person at Chelsea, who wore rusty bombazine in mourning for the better days which lay far back in some remote period beyond the memory of her oldest acquaintance. This person carried Maude’s card to the lady in the cotton dress, and then swooped down upon the little boy with the watering-pot, and carried him away struggling. Maude, still without the citadel, watched the girlish face as it bent over her card. She expected astonishment, confusion, defiance,--anything except what she saw, which was a half-pleased smile, a look of hesitation, and then a little glance towards the gate, and a cry of remonstrance to the elderly person now invisible. “Oh, Mrs. Clinnock, how could you leave that lady outside? The key! ah, I see it’s in the gate.” Maude’s fancied rival had crossed the little lawn by this time, and Rosamond was only separated from Eleanor by the iron scroll-work. “Dear Mrs. Tredethlyn, how very rude you must think my nurse! But so many people have called, out of mere curiosity I am sure, and I am so afraid of strangers--Francis knows that--for he knows how often he has begged me to see you; and it was only yesterday that I gave way, and said he might tell you all about me. But I didn’t think you would come so soon,” said Rosamond, with sudden tears welling up to her innocent brown eyes. She had opened the gate and admitted Maude while she talked, and the two women were now standing face to face.