The slatternly servant that he had expected to see answered the bell, and the tap-tap of her down-at-heels slippers sounded along the passage as she departed to see if Mrs. Feverel would see him. He waited in the draughty hall; it was so dark that coats and hats loomed, ghostly shapes, by the farther wall. A door opened, there was sound of voices--a moment's pause, then the door closed and the maid appeared at the head of the stairs. "The missis says you can come up," she said ungraciously. She eyed him curiously as he passed her, and scented drama in the set of his shoulders and the twitch of his fingers. "A military!" she concluded, and tap-tapped down again into the kitchen. A low fire was burning in the grate and the blind napped against the window. The draught blew the everlastings on the mantelpiece together with a little dry, dusty sound like the rustle of a breeze in dried twigs. Mrs. Feverel sat bending over the fire, and he thought as he saw her that it would need a very great fire indeed to put any warmth into her. Her black hair, parted in the middle, was bound back tightly over her head and confined by a net. She shook hands with him solemnly, and then waited as though she expected an explanation. Harry smiled. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Feverel," he said, "that you may think this extraordinary. I can only offer as apology your acquaintance with my son." "Ah yes--Mr. Robert Trojan." Her mouth closed with a snap and she waited, with her hands folded on her lap, for him to say something further. "You knew him, I think, at Cambridge in the summer?" "Yes, my daughter and I were there in the summer." Harry paused. It would be harder than he expected, and where was the daughter? "Cambridge is very pleasant in the summer?" he asked, his resolution weakening rapidly before her impassivity. "My daughter and I found it so. But, of course, it depends----" It depended, he reflected, on such people as his son--boys whom they could cheat at their ease. He had no doubt at all now that the mother was an adventuress of the common, melodrama type. He suspected the girl of being the same. It made things in some ways much simpler, because money would, probably, settle everything; there would be no question of fine feelings. He knew exactly how to deal with such women, he had known them in New Zealand; but he was amused as he contemplated Clare's certain failure--such a woman was entirely outside her experience. He came to the point at once. "My being here is easily explained. I learn, Mrs. Feverel, that my son formed an attachment for your daughter during last summer. He wrote some letters now in your daughter's possession. His family are naturally anxious that those letters should be returned. I have come to see what can be done about the matter." He paused--but she said nothing, and remained motionless by the fire. "Perhaps," he said slowly, "you would prefer, Mrs. Feverel, to name a possible price yourself?"