She spoke quite civilly, but there was no glimmer of welcome on her thin, drawn-looking face. M. Popeau noticed that her intonation was pleasantly refined.
The driver put down, just inside the door, the luggage he had been carrying, and went off back to his taxi, while Lily and M. Popeau followed the old woman down the corridor. She opened a door to the left, and stood aside for the strangers to pass through into what seemed at first a completely darkened room. But with the words, “I will go and tell Madame la Comtesse you are here,” she went and drew up one of the opaque yellow blinds.
Lily Fairfield, tired, hungry as she was, looked round with an eager sensation of curiosity, and, to tell the truth, she was exceedingly surprised and interested by what she saw.
The drawing-room of La Solitude was indeed strangely furnished and arranged—to English eyes. Considering the size of the villa, it was a large room, long, and in a sense lofty, with four French windows opening on to the stone terrace. As the windows were all shut there was a slightly muggy, disagreeable smell in the room. The old Italian furniture, arranged stiffly round the room, was upholstered in faded tapestry which had obviously been darned with skill and care.
The whitewashed walls were hung with faded Turkey-red cloth, a fact which, to Lily’s eyes, added to the strangeness of the room, though, as a matter of fact, this material is a very usual, if old-fashioned, wall covering, in all French provincial towns and country houses. It formed a not unsuitable background to a number of mediæval and eighteenth-century portraits.
M. Popeau, who was looking round him with almost as much interest and curiosity as his young companion, realised, even in the poor light, that there was not what would be technically called a good—that is, a valuable—picture in the room. But he also told himself that they were genuine family portraits, proving that Count Polda—for he took the striking, sometimes sinister-looking, long-dead faces staring down at him to be the Count’s ancestors—had a right to his title.
Between the windows hung two superb gilt mirrors in beautiful carved and gilt wood floreated frames. They, and an ebony and ivory cabinet, were the only things of real value in the room. A shabby card-table, on which there lay, face upwards, some not very clean patience cards, stood near the farthest window.
There came the sound of quick steps in the corridor. The door opened, and Lily Fairfield beheld, for the first time for over ten years, the woman who had produced such a brilliant, lasting impression on the quiet Epsom household.
“My dear child! What a surprise! We were not expecting you till——” and then Countess Polda stopped short, for she had suddenly realised that there was someone else in the room besides her young kinswoman.
M. Popeau advanced, and bowed in that queer, cut-in-half way which Lily thought so quaint and funny. “Forgive my intrusion, Madame,” he said civilly. “I have been Mademoiselle’s travelling companion from Paris, and as I am very well acquainted with Monte Carlo, while she is quite a stranger to this beautiful part of the world, I thought it best to escort her to your hospitable house.”