It happened on the afternoon of that same day that Eliza Hart, in
pursuance of her domestic avocations, had occasion to go into Mr.
Farge's room on the first floor to lay out a new coverlet on his bed.
When, as thus, compelled to enter the apartments of either of the
gentlemen guests of the establishment it was her practice to leave the
door half open, as a concession to propriety in the abstract and a
testimony to her own discretion in the concrete. The handsome mahogany
doors of Cedar Lodge, unhappily painted white by some vandal of a
former inhabitant, being heavy were hung on a rising hinge. Hence, when
half open, a space of some three inches was left between the back of
the door and the jamb, through which it was easy to get a good view of
the hall or the landing unobserved. Little Mr. Farge professed a warm
predilection for gay colours, and Eliza had selected the new bedspread
with an eye to this fact. It was of bright raspberry-red cotton twill,
enriched with a broad printed border in a flowing design of
lemon-yellow tulips and bottle-green leaves. The salesman, in
exhibiting it to her, had described it as "very chaste and pleasing."
Eliza herself qualified it as "tasty"; and had just disposed it, much
to her own satisfaction, upon the young man's bed, when her attention
was arrested by the tones of an unknown feminine voice in the hall
below. Shortly afterwards she heard Frederick, the valet's large
footsteps hurtling upstairs at a double, followed by a prolonged and
leisurely whispering of silken skirts. Here, clearly, was a matter into
which, for the reputation of Cedar Lodge, it was desirable to look
without delay. Eliza, therefore, moved to the near side of the door,
and, through the three-inch aperture afforded by the rising hinge,
raked the landing with a vigilant eye.
The door of Mr. Iglesias's sitting-room immediately opposite stood
open. In the doorway Frederick indulged in explanatory gesticulation.
While, slowly ascending the last treads of the stairs, was a lady of
unmistakable elegance, arrayed in a large black hat with drooping
plumes to it, a sable cape--the price of which, Eliza felt assured, ran
easily into three figures--and a black cloth dress in the cut of which
she read the last word of contemporary fashion. Arrived at the
stair-head the intruder stood still, calmly surveying her surroundings,
presenting, as she turned her head, a pale face, very red lips, and
eyes--so at least it appeared to the vigilant orbs of Eliza--quite
immodestly large and lustrous, melancholy and somehow extremely
impertinent, too. Then Mr. Iglesias emerged from his sitting-room, an
expression upon his countenance which startled Eliza. She very
certainly had never seen it before. For a moment the lady looked up at
him, as though silently asking some question. Then she patted him
lightly upon the back, and passed into the sitting-room hand in hand
with him, while Frederick with his best flourish closed the door.
"Well, of all the things!" cried Eliza, half aloud; and, oblivious both
of discretion and of the new raspberry-red cotton twill coverlet, she
backed, and sat, plump, upon the edge of the bed. Just then, as she
asserted in subsequently recounting this remarkable incident, you might
have knocked her down with a feather.
"Of all the things!" she repeated, after an interval of breathless
amazement. "And how long has this been going on, I should like to know?
So that is the reason of a certain gentleman's iciness, and his
stand-offish high-mightiness. Well, I never! And poor darling Peachie,
so trustful and confiding all the time; not that she need fear
comparison with anybody.--Bah! the serpent."
Nevertheless she was deeply impressed, and fell into a vein of furious
speculation as to who this unlooked-for smart lady might be. Then,
suddenly remembering the highly compromising nature of her own existing
position sitting not only in the lively little Farge's bed-chamber, but
actually upon his bed, she rose with embarrassment and haste, and made
her way downstairs to the offices--treading circumspectly in dread of
creaking boards--to interview Frederick. But from that functionary she
obtained scant information.
"Zee lady she ask for Mr. Iglesias. I tell her I go to find him. I put
her in zee drawing-room."
"Quite right, Frederick,"--this encouragingly from Eliza.
"But she no stay zere. She come again out quick. She not any name, not
any visiting card give; only write somezing, very fast, on a piece of
paper and screw it togezzer. Zen she not wait till I return, but behind
me upstairs chase."
So there was nothing for it, as the great Eliza perceived, but to
retire to the drawing-room, and--Mrs. Porcher happened to be out--note
the hour and, with the door discreetly half open, await the descent of
the intruder from the floor above.
"I can just catch darling Peachie, too," she said to herself, "and draw
her aside. To meet such a person unexpectedly, on the stairs or in the
hall, would be enough to make her turn quite faint."