“Eh, my friend, Mr. Creespeen,” he said slowly; for Caliphronas, in spite of his intimate acquaintance with the English tongue, picked up, heaven only knows where, could never pronounce proper names without a strong foreign accent,—“eh, my friend, you shudder. Some one is walking over your grave.”
“Oh, what a horrible idea!” cried Mrs. Dengelton in her liveliest manner, for the Count’s good looks had made a deep impression on her elderly heart. “I declare, my dear Count, you make me shudder also. It is exactly the kind of thing my brother Rudolph would say. Ghouls, vampires, omens, dreams, and all those grewsome things, he used to revel in. Yes, positively revel in. Never shall I forget being told how he brought some lady friend a book to read, called ‘Footprints on the Borders of Another World.’ It nearly frightened her into convulsions, and she threw it out of the window.”
“My Uncle Rudolph must have been an interesting kind of person,” said Maurice dryly.
“Oh, my dear Maurice, he was so terribly wild! Yes! Why, in the old days, he would have been a buccaneer or a pirate—it is just the kind of thing he would have liked to be.”
At this last remark, Crispin looked straight at the Count, who met his gaze with an uneasy laugh, and tried to turn the conversation.
“This gentleman, madam? He was very adventurous, I presume?”
“Oh dear me, yes! Your uncle, Eunice, I am speaking of—your uncle, Maurice.”
“Yes, mamma—yes, aunt,” said both the cousins together.
“He had a fiery eye, and was over six feet in height. I always thought him the image of the Templar in ‘Ivanhoe;’ but, of course, I speak from hearsay, as I was a babe when he left England. Is there not a portrait of him somewhere, Maurice?”
“It is just behind you, aunt, over the piano.”