“There, madam, we suppose you to have the advantage of us,” Robin said.
She looked a query, with her head tilted birdlike to one side. “Ah? What’s this? You have no news of him?”
“In truth, madam, we’ve mislaid the old gentleman,” Prudence said. “Or he us.”
My lady burst out laughing again. “I would you had brought him! But that was not to be expected. Yes, he wrote to me. I will tell you — ah, but you are tired! You must sit down. Take the couch, Miss Merriot — tiens, that is not a name for my stupid tongue! — Prue, my angel, some chocolate, yes? Marthe shall make it herself: you remember Marthe, no?”
“Egad, is it the same fat Marthe,” Robin said. “I drank her chocolate in Paris, ten years ago!”
“The same, my cabbage, but fatter — oh, of an enormity! you would not believe! To think you should remember, and you a little gamin — not more than fourteen years, no? But the wickedness even then! And again in Rome, not?”
“Oh, but it was my Lady Lowestoft, then, at the Legation. We — what were we? Sure, it must have been the Polish gentleman and his two sons. There had been some little fracas at Munich, as I remember.”
This made my lady laugh again. She was off to the door, and sent her page running with orders to Marthe.
“So the old gentleman wrote to you, madam?” Prudence said. “Did he say he would send us?”
“Say? Robert? Mon Dieu, when did he in all his life say what one might so easily comprehend? Be sure it was all a mystery, and no names writ down.”