Colin turned from Violet to her.
“Granny dear, the spirit of prophecy is upon you, but you really mustn’t prophesy at dinner. Everyone finds it so disconcerting, darling. Now there are some friends of mine coming to-morrow, and you must promise me not to prophesy at dinner. Otherwise you shall have dinner upstairs and no whist at all.”
For once she paid no attention to him.
“I watched them building twelve years ago,” she said. “They made a chapel for the prosperity of Stanier. Aha! That makes the legend thrive——”
Colin saw Dennis’s wide-eyed gaze, fascinated and puzzled. He had settled that he did not want the boy to know anything about that at present.... And yet surely you sowed in winter the seed that did not germinate till the spring. How marvellously dramatic, too, that Dennis, still hardly free from the soft enveloping sheath of childhood, should learn the beginning of wisdom from this aged Sibyl. It was like taking a child to learn about Druids from Stonehenge.... But Dennis was too young yet: it would never do to initiate him into the final revelation, till he had learned the rudiments and the alphabet of the creed. Simultaneously Violet spoke to him.
“Oh, Colin, stop her,” she whispered. “She mustn’t go on. She mustn’t tell him about the chapel.”
....So Violet knew: he always guessed she had known. He turned to old Lady Yardley again.
“Granny, you’re being very naughty,” he said. “I promise you you shan’t come down to dinner again unless you’re quiet. I won’t have it: do you understand? Now go away with Violet. If you say a word more, you shan’t have any whist at all. Take her away. Violet.”
Violet got up.
“Come along, Granny,” she said. “And you too, Dennis.”