But Miss Felicia was already inside the sitting-room, her critical eyes noting its bare, forbidding furnishing and appointment—­she had not yet let down her skirts, the floor not being inviting.  As each article passed in review—­the unsteady rocking-chairs upholstered in haircloth and protected by stringy tidies, the disconsolate, almost bottomless lounge, fly-specked brass clock and mantel ornaments, she could not but recall the palatial entrance, drawing-room, and boudoir into which Parkins had ushered her on that memorable afternoon when she had paid a visit to Mrs. Arthur Breen—­(her “last visit” the old lady would say with a sly grimace at Holker, who had never forgiven “that pirate, Breen,” for robbing Gilbert of his house).

“And this is what this idiot has got in exchange,” she said to herself as she peered into the dining-room beyond, with its bespattered table-cloth flanked by cheap china plates and ivory napkin rings—­the castors mounting guard at either end.

The entrance of the lady with the transferable hair cut short her revery.

“Mr. Breen says come up, ma’am,” she said in a subdued voice.  It was astonishing how little time it took for Miss Felicia’s personality to have its effect.

Up the uncarpeted stairs marched the great lady, down an equally bare hall lined on either side by bedroom doors, some marked by unblacked shoes others by tin trays holding fragments of late or early breakfasts, the flaring cap obsequiously pointing the way until the two had reached a door at the end of the corridor.

“Now I won’t bother you any more,” said Miss Felicia.  “Thank you very much.  Are you in here Mr. Breen?” she called in a cheery voice as she pushed open the door, and advanced to his bedside:—­ “Oh, you poor fellow!  Oh, I am so sorry!”

The boy lay on a cot-bed pushed close to the wall.  His face was like chalk; his eyes deep set in his head; his scalp one criss-cross of bandages, and his right hand and wrist a misshapen lump of cotton wadding and splints.

“No, don’t move.  Why, you did not look as bad as this yesterday,” she added in sympathetic tones, patting his free hand with her own, her glance wandering over the cramped little room with its meagre appointments.

Jack smiled faintly and a light gleamed in his eyes.  The memory of yesterday evidently brought no regrets.

“I dared not look any other way,” he answered faintly; “I was so afraid of alarming Miss Ruth.”  Then after a pause in which the smile and the gleam flickered over his pain-tortured face, he added in a more determined voice:  “I am glad I went, though the doctor was furious.  He says it was the worst thing I could have done—­and thought I ought to have had sense enough to—­But don’t let’s talk any more about it, Miss Felicia.  It was so good of you to come.  Mr. Grayson has just left.  You’d think he was a woman, he is so gentle and tender.  But I’ll be around in a day or two, and as soon as I can get on my feet and look less like a scarecrow than I do, I am coming over to see you and Miss Ruth and—­yes, and uncle peter—­” Miss Felicia arched her eyebrows:  “Oh, you needn’t look!—­that’s what I am going to call him after this; we settled all that last night.”