A moment or two later she heard the pleasant noise of the rattling coffee-cups in the room behind her. She turned in, ready to embrace the little housemaid who looked after her so cheerfully. In fact, Rosemary was in a mood to embrace the whole world. Contrary to her usual happy way, however, the little housemaid did not look up when Rosemary came in. As a rule she would run and kiss the gracious lady's hand, according to the pretty custom of her country. To-day she just rattled the coffee-cups, and Rosemary noticed that her hands were shaking and that she turned her head very obviously away.
"What is it, Rosa?" Rosemary asked in her best Hungarian, of which she had learned quite a good deal at different times. "Why don't you come and say good morning?"
The kind voice and the necessity to respond to the gracious lady's inquiry broke down the barrier of Rosa's self-control. She raised her apron to her eyes and burst into a flood of tears. The next moment Rosemary was by her side, her arms round the girl's shoulders.
"Rosa!" she said, "Rosa! what is it? Tell me, little thing. What is it? Who has made you cry?"
But Rosa only went on sobbing, and murmuring between her sobs: "Oh, gracious lady! gracious lady! What a calamity! What a dreadful calamity!"
After a few seconds of this Rosemary began to lose patience. She was English and practical, Rosa's continued sobbing and incoherent mutterings got on her nerves. She gave the girl a good-humoured shake.
"What calamity, Rosa?" she queried. "Bless the girl! I'll smack you, Rosa, if you don't speak."
Now this was a language that Rosa understood far better than a string of kindly inquiries. She had been smacked by her mother, almost as soon as she was born, she had been smacked by her elder sister, by her grandmother, by her aunt and by her father while she grew up, and when she started service in the château and was silly or tiresome she had been smacked by the gracious Countess. Being smacked did not hurt, but it acted as a tonic, and braced up Rosa's slackened nerves. The threat of it by the gracious English lady at once dried the well of her tears, she wiped her nose and eyes with her apron and murmured:
"The gracious Count Philip--they have taken him away."