"My lady, this is very painful to me. Will you allow me to go?"
"Certainly; do not let me detain you a moment. I cannot express to you the obligations you have laid me under by relating the history of this house and family. There is nothing more to do in these rooms, I believe. How very, very pretty they look! We must do everything in our power to make the place pleasant to the young master who is coming. But I think I can promise he will be happy here."
Not even Adelaide's smiles and good-humour could smooth Mother Denise's temper for the rest of the day.
"Mark my words, Martin," she said to her husband, "something wrong will happen before the Advocate and his fine lady leave the villa. She has put such horrible ideas into my head! Ah, but I will not think of them; it is treason, rank treason! We shall rue the day she came among us."
"Ha, ha!" chuckled the old man slyly. "You're jealous, Denise, you're jealous! She is the pleasantest lady, and the sweetest spoken, and the most generous, and the handsomest, for twenty miles round. The whole village is in love with her."
"And you as well as the rest, I suppose," snapped Mother Denise.
"I don't say that--I don't say that," piped Martin, with a childish laugh. "Never kiss and tell, Denise, never kiss and tell! If I was young and straight----"
"But you're old and crooked," retorted Mother Denise, "and your mind's going, if it hasn't gone already. You grow sillier and sillier every day."
A reproach the old man received with gleeful laughs and tiresome coughs. His worship of the beautiful lady was not to be lightly disturbed.
"The sweetest and the handsomest!" he chuckled, as he hobbled away, at the rate of half a mile an hour. "I'd walk twenty mile to serve her--twenty mile--twenty mile!"