From the moment when I had resigned myself into the hands of the chambermaid I seemed in some strange way to have lost my ordinary identity--to have stepped out of my own character. At other times my temperament was of the nervous and anxious sort, and my tendency was to exaggerate any difficulties that might place themselves in my way. At other times, having before me the prospect of a critical interview with a stranger, I should have considered with myself what it might be wise to pass over, and what it might be wise to say. Now I never gave my coming interview with the Major a thought; I felt an unreasoning confidence in myself, and a blind faith in _him_. Now neither the past nor the future troubled me; I lived unreflectingly in the present. I looked at the shops as we drove by them, and at the other carriages as they passed mine. I noticed--yes, and enjoyed--the glances of admiration which chance foot-passengers on the pavement cast on me. I said to myself, “This looks well for my prospect of making a friend of the Major!” When we drew up at the door in Vivian Place, it is no exaggeration to say that I had but one anxiety--anxiety to find the Major at home. The door was opened by a servant out of livery, an old man who looked as if he might have been a soldier in his earlier days. He eyed me with a grave attention, which relaxed little by little into sly approval. I asked for Major Fitz-David. The answer was not altogether encouraging: the man was not sure whether his master were at home or not. I gave him my card. My cards, being part of my wedding outfit, necessarily had the false name printed on them--_Mrs. Eustace Woodville_. The servant showed me into a front room on the ground-floor, and disappeared with my card in his hand. Looking about me, I noticed a door in the wall opposite the window, communicating with some inner room. The door was not of the ordinary kind. It fitted into the thickness of the partition wall, and worked in grooves. Looking a little nearer, I saw that it had not been pulled out so as completely to close the doorway. Only the merest chink was left; but it was enough to convey to my ears all that passed in the next room. “What did you say, Oliver, when she asked for me?” inquired a man’s voice, pitched cautiously in a low key. “I said I was not sure you were at home, sir,” answered the voice of the servant who had let me in. There was a pause. The first speaker was evidently Major Fitz-David himself. I waited to hear more. “I think I had better not see her, Oliver,” the Major’s voice resumed. “Very good, sir.” “Say I have gone out, and you don’t know when I shall be back again. Beg the lady to write, if she has any business with me.” “Yes, sir.” “Stop, Oliver!” Oliver stopped. There was another and longer pause. Then the master resumed the examination of the man. “Is she young, Oliver?” “Yes, sir.” “And--pretty?” “Better than pretty, sir, to my thinking.”