The request made was that he should at once do something which Mrs.Finn was to suggest.

He could hardly have been so requested, and that in terms of such warm affection, had it been Mrs.
Finn's intention to ask him to desist altogether from his courtship.
This woman was regarded by Lady Mary as her mother's dearest friend.
It was therefore incumbent on him now to induce her to believe in him as the Duchess had believed.
He knocked at the door of Mrs.Finn's little house in Park Lane a few minutes before the time appointed, and found himself alone when he was shown into the drawing-room.

He had heard much of this lady though he had never seen her, and had heard much also of her husband.
There had been a kind of mystery about her.

People did not quite understand how it was that she had been so intimate with the Duchess, nor why the late Duke had left to her an enormous legacy, which as yet had never been claimed.

There was supposed, too, to have been something especially romantic in her marriage with her present husband.