"I've heard Cricklewick say even worse," retorted the girl. She lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. "No longer ago than yesterday he told me that she made him tired, or something of the sort."
"Poor Cricklewick! I fear he is losing ambition," mused the Marchioness. "An ideal butler but a most dreary creature the instant he attempts to be a human being. It isn't possible. McFaddan is quite human. That's why he is so fat. I am not sure that I ever told you, but he was quite a slim, puny lad when Cricklewick took him out of the stables and made a very decent footman out of him. That was a great many years ago, of course. Camelford left him a thousand pounds in his will. I have always believed it was hush money. McFaddan was a very wide-awake chap in those days." The Marchioness lowered one eye-lid slowly.
"And, by all reports, the Marquis of Camelford was very well worth watching," said Lady Jane.
"Hear the wind!" cried the Marchioness, with a little shiver. "How it shrieks!"
"We were speaking of the Marquis," said Lady Jane.
"But one may always fall back on the weather," said the Marchioness drily. "Even at its worst it is a pleasanter thing to discuss than Camelford. You can't get anything out of me, my dear. I was his next door neighbour for twenty years, and I don't believe in talking about one's neighbour."
Lady Jane stared for a moment. "But—how quaint you are!—you were married to him almost as long as that, were you not?"
"My clearest,—I may even say my dearest,—recollection of him is as a neighbour, Lady Jane. He was most agreeable next door."
Cricklewick appeared in the door.
"Count Antonio Fogazario," he announced.