She was herself quite unaware of the peculiar feeling with which her old friend regarded her, and ignorant that on the rare occasions of her visits to St. James's Place no other visitor was welcome, or, indeed, tolerated. Still, at this painful, anguished moment of her life some subtle instinct caused her to turn to one with whom, in many ways, she had so little in common. She felt secure of his sympathy, and had implicit trust in his discretion; indeed, her belief in him extended to the hope that he would suggest a way by which Penelope should surely be saved from what the mother, full of pain and shrinking terror, could not but regard as a most awful fate. The interview began badly. The gay little garden room, which still kept something of the insouciant, roguish charm of the famous eighteenth-century beauty from whose executors Mr. Julius Gumberg had originally purchased the house, formed an incongruous background to the shrunken figure, the parchment-coloured face, the hairless head, always, however, covered with a skull-cap, of Lady Wantley's old friend. Gilt-rimmed, tarnished mirrors destroyed the sense of solitude, and seemed to Mr. Gumberg's visitor to reflect shadowy witnesses and mocking eavesdroppers of her shame and distress. So strong was this impression that Lady Wantley doubted whether she had been well advised in coming. She felt inclined to get up and go away; and something of what was passing in her mind was divined by her host. When the first long pause between them became oppressive, the old man, lifting himself somewhat painfully from his chair, rang the bell which always stood at his elbow. 'We shall be more at ease, and less likely to be disturbed upstairs,' he said briefly. He was extremely curious to know what had brought Lady Wantley to town, what could be the matter concerning which she had evidently come to consult him; but he was too experienced a confessor to hasten confidences by a word. The comfort of no human being, save that of his present visitor, could have made Mr. Julius Gumberg show himself, as he was about to do, and for no tangible reason, at a disadvantage--that is, so weighted with physical infirmity as to be compelled, when walking upstairs, to seek the assistance of his manservant's arm and guiding hand. His acute, well-trained intellect had remained so keen, and his powers of transacting business had diminished so little, that he felt, with a bitterness none the less intense because so gallantly concealed, the humiliations attendant on advancing age. Accordingly, when quiet, careful Jackson came in answer to his master's summons, her host impatiently motioned Lady Wantley to precede him up the narrow stairs which connected the garden room with the octagon library, where Mr. Gumberg always received his friends in winter and in spring, and which appeared better suited to the receiving of confidences and the giving of advice than did the room below.