At the top of the fourth flight the ladies paused. The landing broadened out into a sort of anteroom, bare and windowless, two dejected-looking gas-jets dispensing a tarnished yellow light into the surrounding gloom. A boy, with a sleek, oiled head, sat at a table reading that morning’s issue of _The Trumpet_. He put it down as Mrs. Willers rose before his vision and nodded familiarly to her. She gave him a quick word of greeting and swept Mariposa forward through a doorway, down a long passage, from which doors opened into tiny rooms with desks and droplights. The girl now and then had glimpses of men seated at the desks, the radiance of the droplights hard on their faces that had been lifted expectantly as their ears caught the interesting rustle of skirts in the corridor. Suddenly, at the end of the passage, Mrs. Willers struck with her knuckles on a closed portal. The next moment Mariposa, with the light of a large window shining full on her face, was shaking hands with Shackleton. Then, in response to his motioning hand, she took the chair beside the desk, where she sat, facing the white glare of the window, conscious of his keen eyes critically regarding her. Mrs. Willers took a chair in the background. For a moment she had fears that the nervousness she had noticed in her protégée’s countenance on the way down would make her commit some _bêtise_ that would antagonize the interest Shackleton so evidently took in her. Mrs. Willers had seen her chief’s brusk impatience roused by follies more excusable than those that rise from a young girl’s nervous shyness and that would be incomprehensible to his hardy, self-confident nature. But Mariposa seemed encouragingly composed. She again felt the curious sense of ease, of being at home with him, that this unknown man had given her before. She had that inspiring sensation that she was approved; that this old-time friend of her father’s had a singular unspoken sympathy with her. “As if he might have been an old friend,” she told her mother after the first meeting, “or some kind of relation--one of those uncles that come back from India in the English novels.” Now only her fluctuating color told of the inward tumult that possessed her as he told her concisely, but kindly, that he had arranged for her to sing before Lepine, the manager of the opera, at two o’clock on the following day. Several people of experience had told him Lepine was an excellent judge. They would then hear an expert’s opinion on her voice. “I think it’s the finest kind of voice,” he said, smiling, “but you know my opinion’s worth more on ores than on voices. So we won’t soar too high till we hear what the fellow whose business it is, has to say. Then, if he’s satisfied”--he gave a little shrug--“we’ll see.”