Then I told of my recall to town, of my commission to visit the opium den, and of the subsequent happenings up to the moment when I had stepped out of the cab and into her house. As I brought my recital to a close, the door opened, and a lumpy-figured, masculine-looking woman, hard-faced, large-featured, entered the room. Her skin was rough, red and grained like brick-dust, and on either cheek was a patch of darker red--almost of purple--which might have been put on by means of a stencil plate, so hard, so abrupt, and so definite were the lines where it began or ended. An incipient moustache and a deep voice seemed to enter a protest, less against the petticoats she was wearing than against her small and well-formed hands and feet. "Clara!" she exclaimed menacingly, "who is this?" Knowing that Miss Carleton's name was Kate, I was somewhat astonished to hear her thus addressed, for it was not until later that I learned the facts. The elder lady, who was Miss Carleton's only aunt, had felt not a little aggrieved that her niece had not been called after herself. So, by way of entering a protest against the omission of the compliment which she felt ought to have been paid to her, and notwithstanding Mr. Carleton's annoyance, and the fact that everybody else called the girl Kate, the elder lady insisted upon addressing her niece as Clara, as though the girl were actually her namesake. "Clara!" she repeated. "Who is this?" The rising remonstrant inflexion which she placed upon her niece's name, and the way in which she said "Who is this?" her deep voice booming like a three-peal bell, sounding first a high, then a low, and then a deep bass growling note, took me so by surprise that I stared at her open-mouthed. "This gentleman has brought me news of my father, aunt," replied Kate tremulously. "He's afraid, I'm afraid, that father has been made a prisoner by blackmailers, and that he won't be released until money has been paid for ransom." "How absurd!" said the other lady, and in spite of the seriousness of the situation, it was as much as I could do to refrain from laughing, so irresistibly, so ludicrously, did her voice remind me of Mr. Penley in _Charley's Aunt_. Then, like a bell which pauses for a moment between its chimes, she boomed again, "How very absurd!" Miss Carleton turned appealingly to me. "Will you please tell my aunt what you have just told me?" she said. Haltingly and half-heartedly I repeated my story, the elder lady pursing up her fleshy lips, rolling her eyes, and indulging in long-drawn sniffs, so plainly indicating an incredulity which was lost in admiration and wonder at its own magnificent power of control, that I bungled the thing sadly, and was not surprised when, at the end of the narrative, she rose majestically from her chair, and rang a rich peal of warning and command. "Clara, leave the room. I will join you, shortly."