On the fourth day the catastrophe happened which Lady Glencora had
feared. A fly with a pair of horses from the Matching Road station
was driven up to the door of the Priory, and Lady Hartletop was
announced. "I knew it," said Lady Glencora, slapping her hand down on
the table in the room in which she was sitting with Madame Goesler.
Unfortunately the old lady was shown into the room before Madame
Goesler could escape, and they passed each other on the threshold.
The Dowager Marchioness of Hartletop was a very stout old lady, now
perhaps nearer to seventy than sixty-five years of age, who for many
years had been the intimate friend of the Duke of Omnium. In latter
days, during which she had seen but little of the Duke himself, she
had heard of Madame Max Goesler, but she had never met that lady.
Nevertheless, she knew the rival friend at a glance. Some instinct
told her that that woman with the black brow and the dark curls was
Madame Goesler. In these days the Marchioness was given to waddling
rather than to walking, but she waddled past the foreign female,--as
she had often called Madame Max,--with a dignified though duck-like
step.
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