Come on, the pair o' ye."

Through a green baize door they entered a passage which led to the
kitchen regions, and turned in at the first door on their right.
From its situation Dickson calculated that the room lay on the
seaward side of the House next to the verandah. The light was bad,
for the two windows were partially shuttered, but it had plainly
been a smoking-room, for there were pipe-racks by the hearth, and on
the walls a number of old school and college photographs, a couple of
oars with emblazoned names, and a variety of stags' and roebucks' heads.
There was no fire in the grate, but a small oil-stove burned inside
the fender. In a stiff-backed chair sat an elderly woman, who seemed
to feel the cold, for she was muffled to the neck in a fur coat.
Beside her, so that the late afternoon light caught her face and head,
stood a girl.

Dickson's first impression was of a tall child. The pose, startled
and wild and yet curiously stiff and self-conscious, was that of a
child striving to remember a forgotten lesson. One hand clutched a
handkerchief, the other was closing and unclosing on a knob of the
chair back. She was staring at Dougal, who stood like a gnome in
the centre of the floor. "Here's the gentlemen I was tellin' ye
about," was his introduction, but her eyes did not move.

Then Heritage stepped forward. "We have met before, Mademoiselle,"
he said. "Do you remember Easter in 1918--in the house in the
Trinita dei Monte?"

The girl looked at him.