I only said yes, but that was not enough, and once started, he asked a string of questions, with “Bur-r-r-r” several times in between. Was Mr. Carruthers going to shoot the pheasants in November? Had he decided to keep on the _chef_? Had he given up diplomacy? I said I really did not know any of these things, I had seen so little of him. Lady Katherine nodded her head, while she measured a comforter she was knitting to see if it was long enough. “I am sure it must have been most awkward for you, his arriving at all; it was not very good taste on his part, I am afraid, but I suppose he wished to see his inheritance as soon as possible,” she said. I nearly laughed, thinking what she would say if she knew which part of his inheritance he had really come to see. I do wonder if she has ever heard that Mrs. Carruthers left me to him, more or less, in her will! “I hope you had your old governess with you, at least,” she continued, as we went up the stairs, “so that you could feel less uncomfortable--really a most shocking situation for a girl alone in the house with an unmarried man.” I told her Mr. Barton was there too, but I had not the courage to say anything about Lord Robert; only that Mr. Carruthers had a friend of his down, who was a great judge of pictures, to see them. “Oh! a valuer, I suppose. I hope he is not going to sell the Correggios!” she exclaimed. “No, I don’t think so,” I said, leaving the part about the valuer unanswered. Mr. Carruthers, being unmarried, seemed to worry her most; she went on about it again before we got to my bedroom door. “I happened to hear a rumour at Miss Sheriton’s (the wool shop in Headington, our town), this morning,” she said, “and so I wrote at once to you. I felt how terrible it would be for one of my own dear girls to be left alone with a bachelor like that--I almost wonder you did not stay up in your own rooms.” I thanked her for her kind thought, and she left me at last! If she only knew! The unmarried ones who came down the passage to talk to Mademoiselle were not half so saucy as the old fellows with wives somewhere. Lord Bentworth was married, and he wanted me to kiss him, whereas Colonel Grimston had no wife, and he never said bo! to a goose! And I do wonder what she thought Mr. Carruthers was going to do to me, that it would have been wiser for me to stay up in my rooms. Perhaps she thinks diplomats, having lived in foreign places, are sort of wild beasts. My room is frightful after my pretty rosy chintzes at Branches. Nasty yellowish wood furniture, and nothing much matching; however there are plenty of wardrobes, so Véronique is content. They were all in the drawing-room when I got down, and Malcolm, the eldest son, who is in a Highland Militia regiment, had arrived by a seven o’clock train. I had that dreadful feeling of being very late, and Mr. Montgomerie wanting to swear at me, though it was only a minute past a quarter to eight.