Miss Anna was a woman about sixty, with perfectly white hair, and keen, large, dark eyes. She was pale, but with a little evanescent colour, the colour of weakness, as if the slight movement she had made had set the blood in motion, and brought a faint rose tint to her cheeks; otherwise she was like ivory finely cut, her nose a little aquiline, her forehead softly shaded with the white, silvery lines of her hair. She was dressed in soft satin, clinging to her in long folds, which was not the fashion at the time, and, therefore, all the more impressive, and had on her head a sort of lace veil, half shrouding her hair and falling over her shoulders. Her dress had all the air of being studied and thought of, though the faint, yellowish tinge of the lace, and the dark sheen of the satin, wine-colour or plum-colour, were all the elements out of which this effect was produced. But the simple girls who stood before her had never seen anything like her, and the wonderful apparition took away their breath. She, on her part, looked at them keenly with her penetrating eyes--then she waved her hand towards two chairs set out in front of her throne. “You asked for me,” she said. “Sit down; I fear I have kept you waiting.” Grace and Milly were far too much excited to notice it--but, as a matter of fact, this stately lady was excited too, and the look with which she perused them, their faces, their mourning dresses, their whole appearance, was unquestionably anxious--though this would have seemed to them incredible, impossible. It was only when they sat down that they perceived some one behind at the other end of the room--a man leaning over a writing-table with his head turned away from them. Miss Anna sat full in the light between the window and the fire. She repeated, with a faint tremour of impatience, “You asked for me?” “No,” said Grace--she would have liked to say madame, or my lady, or something that would have shown her reverence; but was too shy, with all her self-possession, to venture out of the beaten way. She sat down timidly and folded her hands, and looked at her questioner with that wistful, propitiating look, a faint smile quivering about her lips, her eyes cast upwards with a shy but earnest appeal, which sits so prettily upon extreme youth. “No,” she said, “indeed we did not even know your name. We are very unfortunate girls in great trouble, and we found your address among papa’s papers.” “Who is your papa?” Grace saw nothing but the old lady who gazed at her fixedly and riveted her eyes; but Milly, who had no responsibility of speech, saw more than her sister. She saw the man at the writing-table turn hastily round at the sound of Grace’s voice, then rise and approach nearer. When he came into the light she recollected that it was he who had come to them at the hotel the day before.