“Lady Mary Hamble? Sons? I’m sure I don’t know,” he said, staring at the pilot.
“You do not know her? You have no relations with her?”
“I’ve seen her only once in my life. Alix, as far as I remember, has seen her only once. Last winter. She’s a nice woman. That’s all I know about her.”
“Yes. It was last winter. But she asked Alix to go to them. It was very foolish of her not to have gone. If I had been there it would not have happened so. Alix wrote of her with much liking. I gathered from the impression Alix had of her that it would be a good milieu.”
“Oh, excellent I should say. Much better than ours, of course.” Giles was able to recover something of his own broad smile, the farce of it, to his seeing, breaking through too strongly. “You’re quite right about us. We’re not brilliant at all.”
“So I had inferred.” Madame Vervier considered him with kind and lucid eyes. “She is a femme du monde.”
“Very much so, I imagine. I don’t know any femmes du monde, except you,” said Giles.
“Ah, my claim to the rôle would be disputed,” madame Vervier remarked. “She will, I think, have sons. Since it is a position, there will be a son to inherit it.”
“Well, yes. There certainly might be,” said the laughing Giles. He leaned back, clasping his ankle with his hands, and took open possession of his mirth.
Madame Vervier, all indulgence, showed her awareness of its grounds. “It is strange to you, almost horrifying, that I should have such computations; is it not?”