“They don’t deserve it, miss; them to go on so, after the way they have been treated here.  Never in my life have I seen servants so well treated or anyone so good to them and gracious to them as you have been.  They might be in the household of a King for treatment.  And now, just as there is trouble, to go and act like this.  It’s abominable, that’s what it is!”

Miss Trelawny was very gentle with her, and smothered her ruffled dignity; so that presently she went away with, in her manner, a lesser measure of hostility to the undeserving.  In quite a different frame of mind she returned presently to ask if her mistress would like her to engage a full staff of other servants, or at any rate try to do so.  “For you know, ma’am,” she went on, “when once a scare has been established in the servants’ hall, it’s wellnigh impossible to get rid of it.  Servants may come; but they go away just as quick.  There’s no holding them.  They simply won’t stay; or even if they work out their month’s notice, they lead you that life that you wish every hour of the day that you hadn’t kept them.  The women are bad enough, the huzzies; but the men are worse!” There was neither anxiety nor indignation in Miss Trelawny’s voice or manner as she said: 

“I think, Mrs. Grant, we had better try to do with those we have.  Whilst my dear Father is ill we shall not be having any company, so that there will be only three now in the house to attend to.  If those servants who are willing to stay are not enough, I should only get sufficient to help them to do the work.  It will not, I should think, be difficult to get a few maids; perhaps some that you know already.  And please bear in mind, that those whom you get, and who are suitable and will stay, are henceforth to have the same wages as those who are remaining.  Of course, Mrs. Grant, you well enough understand that though I do not group you in any way with the servants, the rule of double salary applies to you too.”  As she spoke she extended her long, fine-shaped hand, which the other took and then, raising it to her lips, kissed it impressively with the freedom of an elder woman to a younger.  I could not but admire the generosity of her treatment of her servants.  In my mind I endorsed Mrs. Grant’s sotto voce remark as she left the room: 

“No wonder the house is like a King’s house, when the mistress is a Princess!”

“A Princess!” That was it.  The idea seemed to satisfy my mind, and to bring back in a wave of light the first moment when she swept across my vision at the ball in Belgrave Square.  A queenly figure! tall and slim, bending, swaying, undulating as the lily or the lotos.  Clad in a flowing gown of some filmy black material shot with gold.  For ornament in her hair she wore an old Egyptian jewel, a tiny crystal disk, set between rising plumes carved in lapis lazuli.  On her wrist was a broad bangle or bracelet of antique work, in the shape of a pair of spreading wings wrought in gold, with the feathers made of coloured gems.  For all her gracious bearing toward me, when our hostess introduced me, I was then afraid of her.  It was only when later, at the picnic on the river, I had come to realise her sweet and gentle, that my awe changed to something else.