"This is a nice place to be sure, where the mistress takes no interest in anything, and the guest walks over everybody. She'll walk over the mistress herself before long—mark my word but she will."
It would be about a week after our arrival at Castle Raa that Price came to my room to say that a priest was asking for me, and he was such a strange-looking thing that she was puzzled to know if his face was that of a child, a woman or a dear old man.
I knew in a moment it must be Father Dan, so I went flying downstairs and found him in the hall, wearing the same sack coat (or so it seemed) as when I was a child and made cupboards of its vertical pockets, carrying the same funny little bag which he had taken to Rome and used for his surplice at funerals, and mopping his forehead and flicking his boots with a red print handkerchief, for the day was hot and the roads were dusty.
He was as glad to see me as I to see him, and when I asked if he would have tea, he said Yes, for he had walked all the way from the Presbytery, after fasting the day before; and when I asked if he would not stay overnight he said Yes to that, too, "if it would not be troublesome and inconvenient."
So I took his bag and gave it to a maid, telling her to take it to the guest's room on my landing, and to bring tea to my boudoir immediately.
But hardly had I taken him upstairs and we had got seated in my private room, when the maid knocked at the door to say that the housekeeper wished to speak with me, and on going out, and closing the door behind me, I found her on the landing, a prim little flinty person with quick eyes, thin lips and an upward lift of her head.
"Sorry, my lady, but it won't be convenient for his reverence to stay in the house to-night," she said.
"Why so?" I said.
"Because Madame has ordered all the rooms to be got ready for the house-party, and this one," (pointing to the guest's room opposite) "is prepared for Mr. and Mrs. Eastcliff, and we don't know how soon they may arrive."
I felt myself flushing up to the eyes at the woman's impudence, and it added to my anger that Alma herself was standing at the head of the stairs, looking on and listening. So with a little spurt of injured pride I turned severely on the one while really speaking to the other, and said: