"And you will change your route in order to give me the pleasure of your company. You will forfeit Tintagel: is it not so?" Madame von Marwitz smiled divinely. "You will come with me in my car to Truro where we take the train and I will drop you to-night at the feet of a cathedral. So. Your luggage is at Mullion? That is simple. We wire to your friends to pack and send it on at once. Leave it to me. You are in my hands. It is a kindness that you will do me. I need you, Mrs. Slifer," she pressed the lady's arm. "My old friend, who lives with me, has left me for the day, and, moreover, she is too old to travel. I must not be alone. I need you. It is a kindness that you will do me. Now you will wait for me here and tea will be brought to you. I shall keep you waiting but for a few moments."
It was to be lifted on the back of a genie. She had wafted them up, along the garden paths, across the verandah, into the serenity and spaciousness and dim whites and greens and silvers of the great music-room, with a backward gaze that had, in all its sweetness, something of hypnotic force and fixity.
She left them with the Sargent portrait looking down at them and the room in its strangeness and beauty seemed part of the spell she laid upon them. The Slifers, herded together in the middle of it, gazed about them half awe-struck and spoke almost in whispers.
"Why, girls," said Mrs. Slifer, who was the first to find words, "this is the most thrilling thing I ever came across."
"You've pulled it off this time, mother, and no mistake," said Maude, glancing somewhat furtively up at the Sargent. "Do look at that perfectly lovely dress she has on in that picture. Did you ever see such pearls; and the eyes seem to follow you, don't they?"
"The poor, distracted thing just clings to us," said Mrs. Slifer. "I shouldn't wonder if she was as lonely as could be."
"All the same," Beatrice, the doubting Thomas of the group, now commented, "I don't think however excited she was she ought to have shaken you like that, mother." Beatrice had examined the appurtenances of the great room with a touch of nonchalance. It was she whom Gregory had seen at the station, seated on the pile of luggage.
"That's petty of you, Bee," said Mrs. Slifer gravely. "Real small and petty. It's a great soul at white heat we've been looking at."
Handcock at this point brought in tea, and after she had placed the tray and disposed the plates of cake and bread-and-butter and left the Slifers alone again, Mrs. Slifer went on under her breath, seating herself to pour out the tea. "And do look at this tea-pot, girls; isn't it too cute for words. My! What will the Jones say when they hear about this! They'd give their eye-teeth to be with us now."
The Slifers, indeed, were never to forget their adventure. It was to be impressed upon their minds not only by its supreme enviableness but by its supreme discomfort. It was almost five when, like three Ganymedes uplifted by the talons of a fierce, bright bird, they soared with Madame von Marwitz towards Truro, and at Truro, in spite of a reckless speed which desperately dishevelled their hair and hats, they arrived too late to catch the 6.40 train for Exeter.