Chivers, left alone, appeared to wonder at it, and his wonder, like that of most old people, lay near his lips. “What does he want, poor dear, to think about?” This speculation, however, was immediately checked by a high, clear voice that preceded the appearance on the stairs, before she had reached the middlemost landing, of the wonderful figure of a lady, a lady who, with the almost trumpeted cheer of her peremptory but friendly call--“Housekeeper, Butler, old Family Servant!”--fairly waked the sleeping echoes. Chivers gazed up at her in quick remembrance, half dismayed, half dazzled, of a duty neglected. She appeared now; she shone at him out of the upper dusk; reaching the middle, she had begun to descend, with beautiful laughter and rustling garments; and though she was alone she gave him the sense of coming in a crowd and with music. “Oh, I should have told him of _her_!” III She was indeed an apparition, a presence requiring announcement and explanation just in the degree in which it seemed to show itself in a relation quite of its own to all social preliminaries. It evidently either assumed them to be already over or wished to forestall them altogether; what was clear at any rate was that it allowed them scant existence. She was young, tall, radiant, lovely, and dressed in a manner determined at once, obviously, by the fact and by the humour of her journey--it might have proclaimed her so a pilgrim or so set her up as a priestess. Most journeys, for this lady, at all events, were clearly a brush of Paris. “Did you think I had got snapped down in an old box like that poor girl--what’s her name? the one who was poking round too--in the celebrated poem? You dear, delightful man, why didn’t you tell me?” “Tell you, mum----?” “Well, that you’re so perfectly--perfect! You’re ever so much better than anyone has ever said. Why, in the name of common sense, has nobody ever said _anything_? You’re everything in the world you ought to be, and not the shade of a shade of anything you oughtn’t!” It was a higher character to be turned out with than poor Chivers had ever dreamed. “Well, mum, I try!” he gaped. “Oh, no, you don’t--that’s just your charm! _I_ try,” cried his friend, “but you do nothing: here you simply _are_--you can’t help it!” He stood overwhelmed. “Me, mum?” She took him in at the eyes--she could take everything at once. “Yes, you too, you positive old picture! I’ve seen the old masters--but you’re the old master!” “The master--I?” He fairly fell back. “‘The good and faithful servant’--Rembrandt van Rhyn: with three stars. _That’s_ what you are!” Nothing would have been more droll to a spectator than her manner of meeting his humbleness, or more charming indeed than the practical sweetness of her want of imagination of it. “The house is a vision of beauty, and you’re simply worthy of the house. I can’t say more for you!”