“Ah, Heaven, he does!” cried the old lady with evident delight. “That is an excellent young man; and yet he was but a very little boy. And Miss Letty? No, she does not remember—how should she? she was too young! And Walter—the pretty boy, so spirituel, with his black velvet frock and short sleeves tied with scarlet ribbon—where was he? What! grown up and married? Was it possible! How time had flown; alas, alas! And the good Dr Haldane and his wife, was he here as much as usual? clever, sarcastic little gentleman!”
Not even the allusions to their own childhood gave Richard and his sister so vast a notion of the time that had elapsed since Madame de Castellan's previous visit to the Abbey, as this last remark of hers; for the occurrence which had shut out the good doctor from the Abbey had happened so long ago that it was almost legendary; and they were so accustomed to his absence, that they could not picture to themselves the state of things to which this patriarchal old lady referred as a matter of course. As for Mrs Haldane, they had heard of the existence of such a person, and that was all. That good woman had not made much noise in the world when she was alive, and she had been among the Silent now for more than eleven years. How far back were the explanations to begin, thought Letty and her brother, that would make this female Rip Van Winkle au fait with the present order of things?
But the old Frenchwoman was fortunately not nearly so anxious to be answered as she was to talk, a feat which she accomplished with much more distinctness than could have been expected, notwithstanding that Sir Richard subsequently ascribed to her paucity of teeth the fact that he only understood about two words out of her every five.
It was very amusing to watch the poor young baronet listening with fruitless diligence to her rapid syllables, and then turning an imploring glance upon his sister and sworn interpreter for aid and rescue. He was obliged upon two occasions to frame some halting reply with his own lips; once when Madame openly complimented him upon his good looks and gallant bearing; and secondly, when she thanked him for the readiness with which he had placed the cottage at Belcomb at her disposal; but for the rest, the burden of conversation rested upon Letty.
“And how is Marie—how is the good Marie, who was to your dear mamma like a servant and a sister in one?” asked the old lady, when they had got her with some difficulty into the drawing-room.
“She is well, Madame; but in some trouble about a certain suitor, whom” (here she pouted a little) “Sir Richard here considers to be undesirable.”
Madame raised her rather shaggy eyebrows, and looked towards the young baronet as if for an explanation. He knew that they were speaking of Mistress Forest, and that was all.
“An admirable person,” said he earnestly; “most trustworthy in every way. We have all cause to be more than satisfied.”
“Ah, then he does not object after all!” exclaimed Madame triumphantly. “And Master Walter—what sort of a wife has he got? Beautiful? That is well; it would be a pity if it were otherwise. And clever? Excellent! And also good, I hope?”
“Well, Madame, she will be here in a minute, so that you may judge for yourself,” answered Letty smiling, but by no means displeased to hear the craunch of carriage-wheels upon the gravel of the terraced drive. These home questions concerning her new sister-in-law were getting rather difficult to answer, and especially in Richard's presence.