“I wish I had come here last year,” she said to her discomfited host. “You should have touched nothing. A place like this doesn’t want Bond Street emptied into it. I don’t know what Gerald would say. He’d be dreadfully angry.”
Mr. Massarene thought that Lord Roxhall had parted with his right to be angry; but he dared not say so. He murmured that he was sorry; whatever there might be that was not suitable should be removed.
“Can’t you see how wrong it all is?” asked his tyrant impatiently.
He regretfully confessed his utter inability to see it; was grieved they were incorrect; they should be moved to-morrow.
“Lady Kenilworth is a purist,” said his daughter in clear cold tones. “New people who come into old houses are of necessity eclectic.”
Her father frowned. He did not know what eclectic meant, but he supposed it meant something vulgar. His guest stared: if Billy’s daughter were cheeky like this it would be necessary, she thought, to take her down a peg or two. But she was forced to confess to herself that the daughter of the house did not look like a person whom it would be easy to take down, either one peg or many.
“Would you like to go to your rooms, ma’am?” murmured her hostess, when the tea had been drunk and the chatter had ceased for a minute and the sound of the first dinner-gong boomed through the house.
“My dear woman,” replied Mouse, “I know the place better than you do! But, really, if I shall find Pekin mandarins on oak banisters, and Minton plaques on Tudor panels, I shall not have strength to go up the staircase!”
“What do she mean?” murmured Margaret Massarene.
“She means to be insolent,” replied her daughter, and the reply was not in a very low tone. But Lady Kenilworth was or pretended to be out of hearing, going out of the library with two of her special friends and calling on others to come with her and see what the vandals had done: the gong was booming loudly.