We had planned that I should start the ball rolling, by mention of my grandmother's name. But Terry was bursting with renewed interest in life, and the woman was answering his question before I had time to speak. "Let the place? No, sir! His lordship refuses all offers. It is useless to make one. He does not see strangers."
"We are not strangers," I rapped out with all Grandmother's haughtiness. "Tell Lord Scarlett that the Princess di Miramare, grand-daughter of Mrs. Raleigh Courtenaye, wishes a few words with him."
That was the way to manage her! She came of a breed over whom for centuries Prussian Junkers had power of life and death; and though she spoke English, it was with the precise wording of one who has learned the language painfully. In me she recognized the legitimate tyrant, and yielded.
We were admitted with reluctance into a magnificent hall which magically matched our description: stone-paved, with a vaulted roof, and an immense oriel window the height of two stories. While our gaze travelled from the carved stone chimney-piece to ancient suits of armour, and such Tudor and Jacobean furniture as remained unsold, a slight sound attracted our attention to the "historic staircase," with its "dog-gates."
A woman was coming down. She had knitting in her hand, and had dropped one of her needles. It was that which made the slight noise we'd heard; and Terry stepped quickly forward to pick it up.
His back was turned to me as he offered the stiletto-like instrument to its owner, so I could not see his face. But I could imagine that charming smile of his, as he looked up at the figure on the stairs. Just so might Sir Walter Raleigh have looked when he'd neatly spread his cloak for Queen Bess; and if he had happened to ask a favour then, it would have been hard for the sovereign to resist!
The woman coming downstairs did not resemble any portrait of the Virgin Queen. She was stout and short-necked; and with her hard, dark face, her implacable eyes, and her knitting, was as much like Madame Defarge in modern dress as a German could be. But even Madame Defarge was a woman! And probably she used her influence now and then in favour of some handsome male head, preferring to see female ones pop into the sawdust!
Her face softened slightly as she accepted the needle, and stiffened again as I came forward.
"My husband is occupied," she said, in much the same stilted English as that of her old servant. "He sends his compliments to the Princess di Miramare and her friend, and hopes both will excuse him. If it is an offer for our place you have come to make, I must refuse in his name. We do not wish to move."
Her tone, her expression, gave to her words the solemnity of an oath sworn by a houseful of Medes and Persians.