"Do you mean about pictures?" said Daphne, a little coldly. "I don't know as much as Dr. Lelius."
Humour leaped into the eyes fixed upon her; but Mrs. Fairmile only said: "That's not given to the rest of us mortals. But after all, _having's_ better than knowing. Don't--_don't_ you possess the Vitali Signorelli?"
Her voice was most musical and flattering. Daphne smiled in spite of herself. "Yes, we do. It's in London now--waiting till we can find a place for it."
"You must let me make a pilgrimage--when it comes. But you know you'd find a number of things at Upcott--where I'm staying now--that would interest you. I forget whether you've met the Duchess?"
"This is our first week here," said Roger, interposing. "The house has been let till now. We came down to see what could be made of it."
His tone was only just civil. His mother, looking on, said to herself that he was angry--and with good reason.
"Ah! the Lelys!" she cried, raising her hand slightly toward the row of portraits on the wall. "The dear impossible things! Are you still discussing them--as we used to do?"
Daphne started. "You know this house, then?"
The smile broadened into a laugh of amusement, as Mrs. Fairmile turned to Roger's mother.
"Don't I, dear Lady Barnes--don't I know this house?"
Lady Barnes seemed to straighten in her chair. "Well, you were here often enough to know it," she said abruptly. "Daphne, Mrs. Fairmile is a distant cousin of ours."
"Distant, but quite enough to swear by!" said the visitor, gaily. "Yes, Mrs. Barnes, I knew this house very well in old days. It has many charming points." She looked round with a face that had suddenly become coolly critical, an embodied intelligence.
Daphne, as though divining for the first time a listener worthy of her steel, began to talk with some rapidity of the changes she wished to make. She talked with an evident desire to show off, to make an impression. Mrs. Fairmile listened attentively, occasionally throwing in a word of criticism or comment, in the softest, gentlest voice. But somehow, whenever she spoke, Daphne felt vaguely irritated. She was generally put slightly in the wrong by her visitor, and Mrs. Fairmile's extraordinary knowledge of Heston Park, and of everything connected with it, was so odd and disconcerting. She had a laughing way, moreover, of appealing to Roger Barnes himself to support a recollection or an opinion, which presently produced a contraction of Daphne's brows. Who was this woman? A cousin--a cousin who knew every inch of the house, and seemed to be one of Roger's closest friends? It was really too strange that in all these years Roger should never have said a word about her!