"I!" I exclaimed in amazement; such amazement, that she gave her schoolgirl snirt of laughter.
"Very well, then," she said. "Monday? Does that suit you?"
We made arrangements, and I saw her off at the station.
I knew Riddings, Lord Lathkill's place, from the outside. It was an old Derbyshire stone house, at the end of the village of Middleton: a house with three sharp gables, set back not very far from the high road, but with a gloomy moor for a park behind.
Monday was a dark day over the Derbyshire hills. The green hills were dark, dark green, the stone fences seemed almost black. Even the little railway-station, deep in the green, cleft hollow, was of stone, and dark and cold, and seemed in the underworld.
Lord Lathkill was at the station. He was wearing spectacles, and his brown eyes stared strangely. His black hair fell lank over his forehead.
"I'm so awfully glad you've come," he said. "It is cheering Carlotta up immensely."
Me, as a man myself, he hardly seemed to notice. I was something which had arrived, and was expected. Otherwise he had an odd, unnatural briskness of manner.
"I hope I shan't disturb your mother. Lady Lathkill," I said as he tucked me up in the car.
"On the contrary," he sang, in his slow voice, "she is looking forward to your coming as much as we both are. Oh, no, don't look on Mother as too old-fashioned, she's not so at all. She's tremendously up-to-date in art and literature and that kind of thing. She has her leaning towards the uncanny—spiritualism, and that kind of thing—nowadays, but Carlotta and I think that if it gives her an interest, all well and good."