"Queen Anne! What an idea. But, anyhow, there's nothing dangerous about
her; she's such a colourless personality."
"What does posterity chiefly say about Queen Anne?" asked Clovis rather
sternly.
"The only thing that I can remember about her," said Jane, "is the saying
'Queen Anne's dead.'"
"Exactly," said Clovis, staring at the glass that had held the Ella
Wheeler Wilcox, "dead."
"Do you mean he takes me for the ghost of Queen Anne?" asked Jane.
"Ghost? Dear no. No one ever heard of a ghost that came down to
breakfast and ate kidneys and toast and honey with a healthy appetite.
No, it's the fact of you being so very much alive and flourishing that
perplexes and annoys him. All his life he has been accustomed to look on
Queen Anne as the personification of everything that is dead and done
with, 'as dead as Queen Anne,' you know; and now he has to fill your
glass at lunch and dinner and listen to your accounts of the gay time you
had at the Dublin Horse Show, and naturally he feels that something's
very wrong with you."
"But he wouldn't be downright hostile to me on that account, would he?"
Jane asked anxiously.
"I didn't get really alarmed about it till lunch to-day," said Clovis; "I
caught him glowering at you with a very sinister look and muttering:
'Ought to be dead long ago, she ought, and some one should see to it.'
That's why I mentioned the matter to you."
"This is awful," said Jane; "your mother must be told about it at once.
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