Bertha Tregaskis was a woman of forty-five, and the dominant impression produced upon Ludovic was one of intense capability. Her strong black hair, untouched with grey, sprang crisp and wiry from a capacious forehead, and the broad contour of her strong face revealed innumerable lines, hinting at the many activities indicated by Lady Argent. Her white, rather prominent teeth were freely revealed as she greeted Ludovic with the sane, ample smile in which she seemed to envelop all her surroundings.
“This is a sad expedition of mine, but I’m very glad to meet Sybil’s son at last; I’ve heard of you so often.”
Her voice was very much what he had expected from her appearance—full, rather deep, and with a native decision of utterance.
“And I of you, from my mother and—in Cornwall.”
“Ah, Cornwall!” She laughed outright. “I be Carnish wumman, sure ’nuff.”
Her instant assumption of the Cornish burr, natural and almost instinctive though it appeared to be, irritated Ludovic.
With a quickness of perception which he was to learn was characteristic of her, Mrs. Tregaskis appeared to perceive it.
“I suspect you heard of me as ‘Miss Bertie,’ since I am never allowed to be anything else down there. I do believe that half Cornwall knew me as ‘Miss Bertie’ until I married, and the name has stuck. At home, when I’m in the village with Hazel, all the old women stand at their doors and tell each other ‘’tis Miss Bertie and her l’il maid.’”
“‘L’il maid’—how perfectly priceless,” murmured the sympathetic Lady Argent, as in duty bound. Ludovic, again conscious of unreasonable annoyance, found himself wondering captiously whether anyone ever spoke of anyone else as a “l’il maid” outside the pages of a novel in dialect, his pet aversion. The phrase seemed too probable to be possible.
“Have you come from the Granthams’ place?” he demanded abruptly, impelled by a vicious desire to abandon the cloying topic of “Miss Bertie” and the atmosphere of local adulation of which she seemed to him redolent.