"That fellow Courtier's caught by the leg," he said. "Don't know what
your Mother will say to an enemy in the camp."
"Isn't he a freethinker, and rather----"
Sir William, following his own thoughts, interrupted:
"Just as well, of course, so far as Miltoun's concerned, to have got him
here."
Agatha sighed: "Well, I suppose we shall have to be nice to him. I'll
tell Mother."
Sir William smiled.
"Ann will see to that," he said.
Ann was seeing to that.
Seated in the embrasure of the window behind the looking-glass, where
Lady Valleys was still occupied, she was saying:
"He fell out of the window because of the red pepper. Miss Wallace says
he is a hostage--what does hostage mean, Granny?"
When six years ago that word had first fallen on Lady Valleys' ears, she
had thought: "Oh! dear! Am I really Granny?" It had been a shock, had
seemed the end of so much; but the matter-of-fact heroism of women, so
much quicker to accept the inevitable than men, had soon come to her
aid, and now, unlike her husband, she did not care a bit. For all that
she answered nothing, partly because it was not necessary to speak in
order to sustain a conversation with little Ann, and partly because she
was deep in thought.
The man was injured! Hospitality, of course--especially since their own
tenants had committed the outrage! Still, to welcome a man who had gone
out of his way to come down here and stump the country against her own
son, was rather a tall order.
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