epared, also, not to be
admitted. But she received me, and the house in Upper Brook Street was
as dismal as Ambrose Tester had represented it. The December fog (the
afternoon was very dusky) seemed to pervade the muffled rooms, and her
ladyship's pink lamplight to waste itself in the brown atmosphere.
He had mentioned to me that the heir to the title (a cousin of her
husband), who had left her unmolested for several months, was now taking
possession of everything, so that what kept her in town was the business
of her "turning out," and certain formalities connected with her dower.
This was very ample, and the large provision made for her included the
London house. She was very gracious on this occasion, but she certainly
had remarkably little to say. Still, she was different, or at any rate
(having taken that hint), I saw her differently. I saw, indeed, that I
had never quite done her justice, that I had exaggerated her stiffness,
attributed to her a kind of conscious grandeur which was in reality much
more an accident of her appearance, of her figure, than a quality of
her character. Her appearance is as grand as you know, and on the day
I speak of, in her simplified mourning, under those vaguely gleaming
_lambris_, she looked as beautiful as a great white lily. She is very
simple and good-natured; she will never make an advance, but she will
always respond to one, and I saw, that evening, that the way to get on
with her was to treat her as if she were not too imposing. I saw also
that, with her nun-like robes and languid eyes, she was a woman who
might be immensely in love. All the same, we hadn't much to say to
each other. She remarked that it was very kind of me to come, that she
wondered how I could endure London at that season, that she had taken a
drive and found the Park too dreadful, that she would ring for some more
tea if I did n't like what she had given me. Our conversation wandered,
stumbling a little, among these platitudes, but no allusion was made
on either side to Ambrose Tester. Nevertheless, as I have said, she was
different, though it was not till I got home that I phrased to myself
what I had detected.

Then, recalling her white face, and the deeper, stranger expression
of her beautiful eyes, I entertained myself with the idea that she was
under the influence of "suppressed exaltation." The more I thought of
her the more she appeared to me not natural; wound up, as it were, to
a calmness beneath wh