“There’ll never be a revolution in England,” said Giles. “People who drink Indian tea could never make a revolution, could they, Alix?”
“I do not think so,” Alix smiled. “Nor in a country with such fogs.”
“That’s a good idea! Eh, Aunt Bella? People must see each other clearly in order to hate each other sufficiently.—What?”
“That is just it,” Alix nodded, laughing. “And you are all so kind. Kinder, I am sure, than we are.”
She and Giles understood each other. He treated her like a child, yet they understood each other, really, better than he and Aunt Bella, for she looked a little cautious when Giles embarked on his sallies, as if she did not quite know in what admission he might not involve her unless she were careful. She took things au pied de la lettre, Aunt Bella, as, after all, an elderly lady would do who sat down to breakfast every morning with such cold comfort on her walls as Messieurs Gladstone, Cobden, and Washington. A row of smiling Watteau engravings hung round Maman’s little dining-room in the rue de Penthièvre. Alix did not think that Gladstone, Cobden, or Washington would look with an eye of approval at Le Départ pour Cythère or the Assemblée Galante. Though Washington might. She liked him far the best of the three.
“And does your grandfather really expect to get the Bourbons back?” Aunt Bella inquired. “You are a Roman, I suppose, my dear child.”
“A Roman?” Alix, for all her English, was perplexed. “I have no Italian blood.”
“She means your church,” said Giles. “And Catholics, in France, do really all want back a king, don’t they?”
“I am a Catholic,” said Alix, “and so, of course, was Grand-père, and he certainly did not like the Republic. We had a very unscrupulous, intriguing mayor at Montarel and perhaps that was one reason. But I do not think that Grand-père expected anything any more or thought at all about kings.”
“A very strange people, the French,” Aunt Bella remarked, as if the fact were so patent that one of them, being present, could not object to its statement. “A very strange people, indeed. And where do you say your grandfather lives, my dear?”