“You are,” I said, “you are—­you—­you—­dragging an ancient name through the dust—­you ...”

I forget what I said.  But I remember, “dragging an ancient name.”  It struck me, at the time, by its forlornness, as part of an appeal to her.  It was so pathetically tiny a motive, so out of tone, that it stuck in my mind.  I only remember the upshot of my speech; that, unless she swore—­oh, yes, swore—­to have done with de Mersch, I would denounce her to my aunt at that very moment and in that very house.

And she said that it was impossible.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I had a sense of walking very fast—­almost of taking flight—­down a long dim corridor, and of a door that opened into an immense room.  All that I remember of it, as I saw it then, was a number of pastel portraits of weak, vacuous individuals, in dulled, gilt, oval frames.  The heads stood out from the panelling and stared at me from between ringlets, from under powdered hair, simpering, or contemptuous with the expression that must have prevailed in the monde of the time before the Revolution.  At a great distance, bent over account—­books and pink cheques on the flap of an escritoire, sat my aunt, very small, very grey, very intent on her work.

The people who built these rooms must have had some property of the presence to make them bulk large—­if they ever really did so—­in the eyes of dependents, of lackeys.  Perhaps it was their sense of ownership that gave them the necessary prestige.  My aunt, who was only a temporary occupant, certainly had none of it.  Bent intently over her accounts, peering through her spectacles at columns of figures, she was nothing but a little old woman alone in an immense room.  It seemed impossible that she could really have any family pride, any pride of any sort.  She looked round at me over her spectacles, across her shoulder.

“Ah ...  Etchingham,” she said.  She seemed to be trying to carry herself back to England, to the England of her land-agent and her select visiting list.  Here she was no more superior than if we had been on a desert island.  I wanted to enlighten her as to the woman she was sheltering—­wanted to very badly; but a necessity for introducing the matter seemed to arise as she gradually stiffened into assertiveness.

“My dear aunt,” I said, “the woman....”  The alien nature of the theme grew suddenly formidable.  She looked at me arousedly.

“You got my note then,” she said.  “But I don’t think a woman can have brought it.  I have given such strict orders.  They have such strange ideas here, though.  And Madame—­the portiere—­is an old retainer of M. de Luynes, I haven’t much influence over her.  It is absurd, but....”  It seems that the old lady in the lodge made a point of carrying letters that went by hand.  She had an eye for gratuities—­and the police, I should say, were concerned.  They make a good deal of use of that sort of person in that neighbourhood of infinitesimal and unceasing plotting.