"Nonsense, Tilda! You really mustn't say such things!"
"Do, for God's sake, stop looking at everyone through rose-coloured spectacles!" said Stephen. "Sturry's hated me ever since I told Uncle Nat he was watering the port, and you know it!"
"Well, but that isn't to say that he would deliberately try to harm you, old man!" protested Joseph.
"You see to it that he goes and swears whatever it is he's got to swear," said Mathilda.
"All right, I will. It'll annoy him," said Stephen.
"All this," said Maud, "has nothing to do with the Life of the Empress Elizabeth."
"If you put it like that," said Stephen, "nothing so far has had anything to do with that thrice-accursed female!""I do not know why you should speak of the Empress in that rude way," said Maud, with tremendous dignity. "You know nothing about her."
"No one who has been privileged to live under the carne roof with you for the past three days," said Stephen, loosing patience, "can claim to know nothing about the Empress!"
This outrageous remark very nearly precipitated a quite unlooked-for crisis. Maud's bosom swelled, and she was just about to utter words which her fascinated audience felt would have been shattering to anyone less hardened than Stephen, when Sturry entered the room with the cocktail-tray. Even under the stress of powerful emotion Maud knew that a lady never permitted herself to quarrel in front of the servants; and instead of scarifying Stephen, she held out the Life of the Empress to Sturry, and asked him if he knew how it had found its way into the incinerator.
Looking outraged, Sturry disclaimed all knowledge. Maud requested him to make enquiries amongst the staff, to which he bowed, without, however, vouchsafing any reply.