Colin pushed back his chair.
“Granny, you are charming,” he said, “but we settled the first night that I was here that we were to have no prophesying at dinner.”
“But I am not prophesying,” said she. “I am only saying what you and I know and what presently he will know. It will be pleasant when we all know, for then we can talk freely. Shall I tell him now, Colin? Shall I break the sheet of ice? I would be out in the sun then, instead of being cold. I will melt my frost——”
He took her stick and put it into her hand.
“Get up,” he said. “Go and melt the frost by the fire in the gallery, where your card-table is ready for you. Now not a word more.”
She rose, still smiling, as if content with what she had said. She had borne witness to what she knew, and what Colin knew, and whether he was sharp with her or not was insignificant compared to that. Leaning on her stick, she went out, followed by Violet.
Colin watched Dennis’s troubled face as he came back to the table after closing the door behind the others. When first three weeks ago old Lady Yardley had ‘prophesied,’ he had been puzzled, but excited and fascinated. But since then he had learned something; waking or asleep he had seen the outline of a terrible shadow, and it seemed to be the same as that, whatever it was, of which she had just spoken.
“What does she mean?” he said. “What was all that about her telling me and melting the frost?”
“Dottiness,” said Colin at once. “You discovered she was dotty weeks ago. And just now, you remember, she thought that you were me as a boy again. That wasn’t very clear-headed, was it? And all the rest was just as muddled. Don’t think anything more about it, Dennis.”
That cloud did not clear away at once from Dennis’s forehead. His father had clearly wanted to tell him something last night, and, by an unerring instinct, he divined that this same something lurked behind what he had just stopped old Lady Yardley from saying. It concerned the legend, clearly; some practical personal application of the legend....