“Who’s that?” he cried as she entered. He seemed to have difficulty with his vocal cords.
“Eh?”
“Language!”
“Who is it? That girl—who is she? What’s her name?”
“You needn’t shout,” said Claire, annoyed.
The photograph which had so excited this young man was the large one that stood in the centre of the mantelpiece. It represented a girl in hunting costume, standing beside her horse, and it was Claire’s favourite. A dashing and vigorous duster, with an impressive record of smashed china and broken glass to her name, she always handled this particular work of art with a gentle tenderness.
“That?” she said. “Why, that’s Miss Kay, of course.”
She came forward and flicked a speck of dust off the glass.
“Taken at Midways, that was,” she said, “two or three years ago, before the old colonel lost his money. I was Miss Kay’s maid then—personal maid,” she added with pride. She regarded the photograph wistfully, for it stood to her for all the pomps and glories of a vanished yesterday, for the brave days when there had been horses and hunting costumes and old red chimneys against a blue sky and rabbits in the park and sunlight on the lake and all the rest of the things that made up Midways and prosperity. “I remember the day that photograph was took. It was printed in the papers, that photograph was.”