Miss Flynn's description had prepared her for a considerable shock,
but she wasn't agitated by her first glimpse of the person who
awaited her. A youngish well-dressed woman stood there, and silence
was between them while they looked at each other. Before either had
spoken however Adela began to see what Miss Flynn had intended. In
the light of the drawing-room window the lady was five-and-thirty
years of age and had vivid yellow hair. She also had a blue cloth
suit with brass buttons, a stick-up collar like a gentleman's, a
necktie arranged in a sailor's knot, a golden pin in the shape of a
little lawn-tennis racket, and pearl-grey gloves with big black
stitchings. Adela's second impression was that she was an actress,
and her third that no such person had ever before crossed that
threshold.

"I'll tell you what I've come for," said the apparition. "I've come
to ask you to intercede." She wasn't an actress; an actress would
have had a nicer voice.

"To intercede?" Adela was too bewildered to ask her to sit down.

"With your father, you know. He doesn't know, but he'll have to."
Her "have" sounded like "'ave." She explained, with many more such
sounds, that she was Mrs. Godfrey, that they had been married seven
mortal months. If Godfrey was going abroad she must go with him, and
the only way she could go with him would be for his father to do
something. He was afraid of his father--that was clear; he was
afraid even to tell him. What she had come down for was to see some
other member of the family face to face--"fice to fice," Mrs. Godfrey
called it--and try if he couldn't be approached by another side. If
no one else would act then she would just have to act herself. The