Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/228

218 "Ah, well done, Aunt Cathie!" she said.

That was more puzzling. Cathie was not conscious of having done anything well. She simply knew that at one moment she was talking to a Duchess, no less, and at the very next that she was talking to a slightly impertinent person. She had talked, she hoped, quite suitably to each.

Mouse looked at her a moment, with her chin supported on her hand.

"Ah, how grande dame!" she said quietly. "Lucia isn't, you see. I beg your pardon."

She got up from her chair, made a little gesture of her head to preface her leaving the room, and—left it.

Aunt Cathie turned a wild eye to the moulded ceiling.

"Oh, what have I done?" she asked. "Have I been very rude? What does it mean? And she called me—what was it?—a grande dame. That must have been most sarcastic. But I don't see what cause I had given her for being sarcastic."

Maud got up.

"It wasn't in the least sarcastic," she said. "It was as straightforward and true as what you said to her. Now let us go out, Aunt Cathie."

Cathie gave a little wail of dismay, pressing her two long, bony hands together.

"I feel as if I had done something dreadful," she said. "But it's all so strange. One hardly feels to know what they are all talking about."

"Dear Aunt Cathie," said Maud, "you are not sorry you came, are you?"

Cathie turned a solemn face on her.

"I wouldn't have missed it for two rheumatic shoulders," she said, "or for a hundred pounds."

Later in the day Cathie again found herself in an empty house. She had had a long stroll with Maud in the morning, which was delightful, and they had lunch with the shooters at a farm some mile or two from the house. But after lunch the splendour of the morning had given place to a threatening sky, and Maud had recommended her to go home in her motor, instead of walking with the shooters and risking a wetting. This she had done, and, arriving back about four, had made her way to the library, where she found with difficulty the volumes of travels and photographs which Lucia had spoken of. But they were a little