"There must be no spying upon these ladies!" I admonished severely. "All the people on the place must remember that Mrs. Bashford is mistress here, and entitled to fullest respect."
He had hardly gone before Torrence had me on the wire to hear my report and to say that Raynor had left Washington for a weekend in Virginia.
"That lets us out for a few days, but I'll have to report that Mrs. Bashford is at Barton the moment I learn that he is back in Washington."
I assured him that nothing had occurred to encourage a suspicion that Mrs. Bashford was not all that she pretended to be. The day was marked by unusual activities on the part of the waiters and bell-hops. Instead of the company drills to which I had become accustomed they moved about in pairs along the shore and the lines of the fences. I learned that Antoine had ordered this, and the "troops" were obeying him with the utmost seriousness. The "service" on the estate was certainly abundant. It was only necessary to whistle and one of the Tyringham veterans would come running.
In spite of the complete satisfaction I had expressed to Torrence as to the perfect integrity and honest intentions of the two women, the curiosity of the American State Department and the visit of Montani required elucidation beyond my powers. At dinner they were in the merriest humor. The performances of the little army throughout the day had amused them greatly.
"How delightfully feudal!" exclaimed Alice. "Really we should have a moat and drawbridge to make the thing perfect. Constance and I are the best protected women in the world!"
We extracted all the fun possible from the idea that the estate was under siege; that Alice was the chatelaine of a beleaguered castle, and that before help could reach us we were in danger of being starved out by the enemy. They called into play the poetry which had so roused Antoine's apprehensions, and their talk bristled with quotations. Alice rose after the salad and repeated at least a page of Malory, and the Knights of the Round Table having thus been introduced, Mrs. Farnsworth recited several sonorous passages from "The Idyls of the King." They flung lines from Browning's "In a Balcony" at each other as though they were improvising. The befuddlement of Antoine and the waiter who assisted him added to the general joy. They undoubtedly thought the two women quite out of their heads, and it was plain that I suffered greatly in Antoine's estimation by my encouragement of this frivolity. Mrs. Farnsworth walked majestically round the table and addressed to me the lines from Macbeth beginning:
"Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised,"
while Antoine clung to the sideboard listening with mouth open and eyes rolling.
Later, in the living-room, Alice sang some old ballads. She was more adorable than ever at the piano. It was a happiness beyond any in my experience of women to watch her, to note the play of light upon her golden head, to yield to the spell of her voice. Ballads had never been sung before with the charm and feeling she put into them; and after ending with "Douglas, Douglas," she responded to my importunity with "Ben Bolt," and then dashed into a sparkling thing of Chopin's, played it brilliantly and rose, laughingly mocking my applause.