Miss Felicia kept her promise to Ruth.

Before that young woman, indeed, tired out with anxiety, had opened her beautiful eyes the next morning and pushed back her beautiful hair from her beautiful face--and it was still beautiful, despite all the storms it had met and weathered, the energetic, old lady had presented herself at the front door of Mrs.
Hicks's Boarding Hotel (it was but a step from MacFarlane's) and had sent her name to the young man in the third floor back.
A stout person, with a head of adjustable hair held in place by a band of black velvet skewered by a gold pin, the whole surmounted by a flaring mob-cap of various hues and dyes, looked Miss Felicia all over and replied in a dubious tone: "He's had a bad mash-up, and I don't think--" "I am quite aware of it, my dear madam, or I would not be here.

Now, please show me the way to Mr.Breen's room--my brother was here last night and--" "Oh, the bald-headed gentleman ?" exclaimed Mrs.Hicks.

"Such a dear, kind man; and it was as much as I could do to get him to bed and he a--" 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.