Fordham Castle

Summary

Sharp little Madame Massin, who carried on the pleasant pension and who had her small hard eyes everywhere at once, came out to him on the terrace and held up a letter addressed in a manner that he recognised even from afar, held it up with a question in her smile, or a smile, rather a pointed one, in her question—he could scarce have said which. She was looking, while so occupied, at the German group engaged in the garden, near by, with aperitive beer and disputation—the noonday luncheon being now imminent; and the way in which she could show prompt lips while her observation searchingly ranged might have reminded him of the object placed by a spectator at the theatre in the seat he desires to keep during the entr’acte. Conscious of the cross-currents of international passion, she tried, so far as possible, not to mix her sheep and her goats. The view of the bluest end of the Lake of Geneva—she insisted in persuasive circulars that it was the bluest—had never, on her high-perched terrace, wanted for admirers, though thus early in the season, during the first days of May, they were not so numerous as she was apt to see them at midsummer. This precisely, Abel Taker could infer, was the reason of a remark she had made him before the claims of the letter had been settled. “I shall put you next the American lady—the one who arrived yesterday. I know you’ll be kind to her; she had to go to bed, as soon as she got here, with a sick-headache brought on by her journey. But she's better. Who isn't better as soon as they get here? She's coming down, and I’m sure she’d like to know you.”

Taker had now the letter in his hand—the letter intended for “Mr. C. P. Addard”; which was not the name inscribed in the two or three books he had left out in his room, any more than it matched the initials, “A. F. T.” attached to the few pieces of his modest total of luggage.