Big, humorous, emotional, imperious, but, above all, interested and sociable Lady Blanchemain:  do you know her, I wonder?  Her billowy white hair?  Her handsome soft old face, with its smooth skin, and the good strong bony structure underneath?  Her beautiful old grey eyes, full of tenderness and shrewdness, of curiosity, irony, indulgence, overarched and emphasized by regular black eyebrows?  Her pretty little plump pink-white hands, (like two little elderly Cupids), with their shining panoply of rings?  And her luxurious, courageous, high-hearted manner of dressing?  The light colours and jaunty fashion of her gowns?  Her laces, ruffles, embroideries?  Her gay little bonnets?  Her gems?  Linda Baroness Blanchemain, of Fring Place, Sussex; Belmore Gardens, Kensington; and Villa Antonina, San Remo:  big, merry, sociable, sentimental, worldly-wise, impetuous Linda Blanchemain:  do you know her?  If you do, I am sure you love her and rejoice in her; and enough is said.  If you don’t, I beg leave to present and to commend her.

I spoke, by the bye, of her “old” face, her “old” eyes.  She is, to be sure, in so far as mere numbers of years tell, an old woman.  But I once heard her throw out, in the heat of conversation, the phrase, “a young old thing like me;” and I thought she touched a truth.

III

Well, then, the footman, in his masterful way, pulled the bell-cord; Lady Blanchemain contemplated the landscape, and had her opinion of a generation that could liken it to the drop-scene of a theatre; and in due process of things the bell was answered.

It was answered by a man in a costume that struck my humorous old friend as pleasing:  a sallow little man whose otherwise quite featureless suit of tweeds was embellished by scarlet worsted shoulder-knots.  With lack-lustre eyes, from behind the plexus of the grille, he rather stolidly regarded the imposing British equipage, and waited to be addressed.

Lady Blanchemain addressed him in the language of Pistoja.  Might one, she inquired, with her air of high affability, in her distinguished old voice, might one visit the castle?—­a question purely of convention, for she had not come hither without an assurance from her guide-book.

Shoulder-knots, however,—­either to flaunt his attainments, or because indeed Pistoiese (what though the polyglot races of Italy have agreed upon it as a lingua franca) offered the greater difficulties to his Lombardian tongue,—­replied in French.

“I do not think so, Madame,” was his reply, in a French sufficiently heavy and stiff-jointed, enforced by a dubious oscillation of the head.

Lady Blanchemain’s black eyebrows shot upwards, marking her surprise; then drew together, marking her determination.

“But of course one can—­it’s in the guide-book,” she insisted, and held up the red-bound volume.

The sceptic gave a shrug, as one who disclaimed responsibility and declined discussion.