"Why, is anybody dead?" asked Sir Lionel, looking as if he were running over a list in his head, but couldn't call up a name which concerned him personally.
"There's been a thinning off among old friends lately, I'm sorry to say; I've told you about most of them, I think, in postscripts," replied Mrs. Norton. "But it wasn't their loss, poor dears, which brought me over. It was the fire."
"What fire?" her brother wanted to know.
"Why, your fire. Surely you must have seen about it in to-day's London papers?"
"To-day's London papers won't get to Marseilles till to-morrow, and I haven't been long enough in Paris to see one yet," explained Sir Lionel. "Have I had a serious fire, and what has been burnt?" He spoke as coolly as if it were the question of a mutton chop.
"Part of the house," returned Mrs. Norton, not even trying to break it to him.
"I hope not the old part," said he.
"No, it is the new wing. But that seemed to me such a pity. Such a beautiful bathroom, hot and cold, spray and shower, quite destroyed; and a noble linen closet, heated throughout with pipes, and fully stocked."
"The bathroom may have been early Pullman, and the linen closet late German Lloyd, my dear Emily; but the rest of the house is Tudor, and can't be replaced," said Sir Lionel; and I was sure, as he looked down at his sister, of a thing I'd already suspected: that he has a sense of humour. That's a modern improvement with which you wouldn't expect a dragon to be fitted; but I begin to see that this is an elaborate and complicated Dragon. Some people are Pharisees about their sense of humour, and keep harping on it till you wish it were a live wire and would electrocute them. He would rather be ashamed of his, I fancy, and yet it must have amused him, and made him feel good chums with himself, away out in Bengal.
Mrs. Norton said that Warings had very handsome Tudor dining-rooms in one or two of their model houses, so nothing was irrevocable nowadays; but she was pleased, if he was, that only the modern wing was injured. It had happened yesterday morning, just too late for the newspapers, which must have annoyed the editors; and she had felt that it would be best to undertake the journey to Paris, and consult about plans, as it might make a difference (here she glanced at me); but she hadn't mentioned the fire when wiring, because things seemed worse in telegrams, and besides, it would have been a useless expense. No doubt it had been stupid of her, but she had fancied he would certainly see it in the paper, with all details, and therefore guess why she was meeting him.