The nine mellow strokes, by which she was now apprised of the hour, were a message from the great clock at Westminster itself.

As the last of them died away, there was a firm knocking on her own door, and she rose and opened it.

She returned to the room, with a look of steady pleasure in her eyes, and she was talking to Ralph Denham, who followed her.
"Alone ?" he said, as if he were pleasantly surprised by that fact.
"I am sometimes alone," she replied.
"But you expect a great many people," he added, looking round him.

"It's like a room on the stage.

Who is it to-night ?" "William Rodney, upon the Elizabethan use of metaphor.