“No, no; nothing of the kind. I had a little attack of—that old pain I used to suffer from—neuralgia, I suppose. As one gets older one dislikes owning to rheumatism. No, no, no bad news; a little physical annoyance—nothing more.”
Everard tried hard to recollect what the “old pain” was, but could not succeed in identifying anything of the kind with the always vigorous Miss Susan. She interrupted his reflections by saying with a very jaunty air, which contrasted strangely with her usual manner, “Did you meet our aristocratic visitors?”
“An old Frenchman, with a funny little child clasped round his neck,” said Everard, to whose simple English understanding all foreigners were Frenchmen, “and a very handsome young woman. Do they belong here? I did meet them, and could not make them out. The old man looked a genial old soul. I liked to see him with the child. Your visitors! Where did you pick them up?”
“These are very important people to the house and to the race,” said Miss Susan, with once more, so to speak, a flutter of her wings. “They are—but come, guess; does nothing whisper to you who they are?”
“How should it?” said Everard, in his dissatisfaction with Miss Susan’s strange demeanor growing somewhat angry. “What have such people to do with you? The old fellow is nice-looking enough, and the woman really handsome; but they don’t seem the kind of people one would expect to see here.”
Miss Susan made a pause, smiling again in that same sickly forced way. “They say it is always good for a race when it comes back to the people, to the wholesome common stock, after a great many generations of useless gentlefolk. These are the Austins of Bruges, Everard, whom you hunted all over the world. They are simple Belgian tradespeople, but at the same time Austins, pur sang.”
“The Austins of Bruges?”
“Yes; come over on a visit. It was very kind of them, though we are beginning to tire of each other. The old man, M. Guillaume, he whom Farrel thought he had done away with, and his daughter-in-law, a young widow, and the little child, who is—the heir.”
“The heir?—of the shop, you mean, I suppose.”
“I do nothing of the kind, Everard, and it is unkind of you not to understand. The next heir to Whiteladies.”