“I beg your pardon, grandmother.  But she is proud, is she not?”

“If she is, she has reason to be.  The Dedlock family have always reason to be.”

“Well,” says Watt, “it’s to be hoped they line out of their prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and vainglory.  Forgive me, grandmother!  Only a joke!”

“Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for joking.”

“Sir Leicester is no joke by any means,” says Watt, “and I humbly ask his pardon.  I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller might?”

“Surely, none in the world, child.”

“I am glad of that,” says Watt, “because I have an inexpressible desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood.”

He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed.  But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa’s ears that burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady’s maid is holding forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.

My Lady’s maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed brown woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws too eager and the skull too prominent.  There is something indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour and near knives.  Through all the good taste of her dress and little adornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed.  Besides being accomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her post, she is almost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language; consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon Rosa for having attracted my Lady’s attention, and she pours them out with such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner that her companion, the affectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon stage of that performance.

Ha, ha, ha!  She, Hortense, been in my Lady’s service since five years and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet, caressed—­absolutely caressed—­by my Lady on the moment of her arriving at the house!  Ha, ha, ha!  “And do you know how pretty you are, child?” “No, my Lady.”  You are right there!  “And how old are you, child!  And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!” Oh, how droll!  It is the best thing altogether.

In short, it is such an admirable thing that Mademoiselle Hortense can’t forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke—­an enjoyment expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my Lady’s mirrors when my Lady is not among them.