"Eh, bien, monsieur?"
Davenant doubled himself up into a deep bow, but before he had time to stammer out some apologetic self-introduction, she continued:
"You've come from Davis and Stern, I suppose, on business. I always tell them not to send me people, but to cable. Why didn't they cable? They know I don't like Americans coming here. I'm pestered to death with them—that is, I used to be—and I should be still, if I didn't put 'em down."
The voice was high and chattering, with a tendency to crack. It had the American quality with a French intonation. In speaking, the Marquise made little nervous dashes, now to the right, now to the left, as though endeavoring to get by some one who blocked her way.
"I haven't come on business, my—my lady."
He used this term of respect partly from a frightened desire to propitiate a great personage and partly because he couldn't think of any other.
"Then what have you come on? If it's to see the château you may as well go away. It's never shown. Those are positive orders. I make no exceptions. They must have told you so at the gate. But you Americans will dare anything. Mon Dieu, quel tas de barbares!"
The gesture of her hands in uttering the exclamation was altogether French, but she betrayed her oneness with the people she reviled by saying: "Quel tah de bah-bah!"
"I haven't come to see the château either, my lady—"
"You can call me madame," she interrupted, not without a kindlier inflection on the hint.