ng herself. The next instant an
electric light miraculously came into existence outside the door,
illuminating her from head to foot. This startled her. But she said to
herself that it must be the latest dodge, and that, at any rate, it was
a very good dodge, and she began again the process of reassuring
herself. The door opened, and a prim creature stiffly starched stood
before Mrs Swann. "My word!" reflected Mrs Swann, "she must cost her
mistress a pretty penny for getting up aprons!" And she said aloud
curtly:

"Will you please tell Mr Gilbert Swann that someone wants to speak to
him a minute at the door?"

"Yes," said the servant, with pert civility. "Will you please step in?"

She had not meant to step in. She had decidedly meant not to step in,
for she had no wish to encounter Mrs Clayton Vernon; indeed, the
reverse. But she immediately perceived that in asking to speak to a
guest at the door she had socially erred. At Mrs Clayton Vernon's
refined people did not speak to refined people at the door. So she
stepped in, and the door was closed, prisoning her and her potatoes in
the imposing hall.

"I only want to see Mr Gilbert Swann," she insisted.

"Yes," said the servant. "Will you please step into the breakfast-room?
There's no one there. I will tell Mr Swann."

VI

As Mrs Swann was being led like a sheep out of the hall into an
apartment on the right, which the servant styled the breakfast-room,
another door opened, further up the hall, and Mrs Clayton Vernon
appeared. Magnificent though Mrs Swann was, the ample Mrs Clayton
Vernon, discreetly _decolletee_, was even more magnificent. Dressed as
she meant to show herself at the concert, Mrs Clayton Vernon made a
resplendent figure worthy to be the cousin of the leader of the
orchestra--and worthy even to take the place of the missing Countess of
Chell. Mrs Clayton Vernon had a lorgnon at the end of a shaft of
tortoise-shell; otherwise, a pair of eye-glasses on a stick. She had the
habit of the lorgnon; the lorgnon seldom left her, and whenever she was
in any doubt or difficulty she would raise the lorgnon to her eyes and
stare patronizingly. It was a gesture tremendously effective. She
employed it now on Mrs Swann, as who should say, "Who is this
insignificant and scarcely visible creature that has got into my noble
hall?" Mrs Swann stopped, struck into immobility by the basilisk glance.
A courageous and even a defiant woman, Mrs Swann was taken aback