The lady who had promised to ask my lady
whether the latter could see him did not return. He reflected that she
had not promised to return; she had merely promised to ask a question.
As the minutes passed he grew careless, or grew bolder, gradually
dropping his correct attitude of a man-about-town paying an afternoon
call, and peered through the glass of the doors that divided him from
the Countess. He could distinguish nothing that had life. One of his
preliminary tremors had been caused by a fanciful vision of
multitudinous footmen, through a double line of whom he would be
compelled to walk in order to reach the Countess.
But there was not even one footman. This complete absence of indoor
footmen seemed to him remiss, not in accordance with centuries of
tradition concerning life at Sneyd.
Then he caught sight, through the doors, of the back of Jock, the
Countess's carriage footman and the son of his mother's old friend. Jock
was standing motionless at a half-open door to the right of the space
between Denry's double doors and the next pair of double doors. Denry
tried to attract his attention by singular movements and strange noises
of the mouth.
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