Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/182

 substantial alternative, in case her ladyship should not be able to receive him.

As soon as the great portal in Belgrave Square was drawn open before him, he perceived that the house was occupied and animated—if the latter term might properly be applied to a place which had hitherto given Hyacinth the impression of a magnificent mausoleum. It was pervaded by subdued light and tall domestics; Hyacinth found himself looking down a kind of colonnade of colossal footmen, an array more imposing even than the retinue of the Princess at Medley. His inquiry died away on his lips, and he stood there struggling with dumbness. It was manifest to him that some high festival was taking place, at which his presence could only be deeply irrelevant; and when a large official, out of livery, bending over him for a voice that faltered, suggested, not unencouragingly, that it might be Lady Aurora he wished to see, he replied in a low, melancholy accent, 'Yes, yes, but it can't be possible!' The butler took no pains to controvert this proposition verbally; he merely turned round, with a majestic air of leading the way, and as at the same moment two of the footmen closed the wings of the door behind the visitor, Hyacinth judged that it was his cue to follow him. In this manner, after traversing a passage where, in the perfect silence of the servants, he heard the shorter click of his plebeian shoes upon a marble floor, he found himself ushered into a small apartment, lighted by a veiled lamp, which, when he had been left there alone, without further remark on the part of his conductor, he recognised as the scene—only now more amply decorated—of one of his former interviews. Lady Aurora kept him waiting a few