"Mr. Quisanté has had certain—er—difficulties to overcome," she murmured rather vaguely, and was not reassured by a dry chuckle and the heartfelt exclamation, "I should think so!" Altogether it was difficult to make out exactly what Mr. Quisanté's aunt thought of him.
Here the old lady met also the Dean of St. Neot's, who called every now and then because he liked May and wished to show that he bore no malice about the Crusade; but the subject was still a sore one, and he was as little prepared to be chuckled at over it as Lady Castlefort had been over her diplomatic indication of the fact that Quisanté's blood was not blue nor his manners those of a grand old English gentleman.
"Sandro knew all along that there wasn't much in that, but it was something to begin with," Aunt Maria remarked to the uncomfortable Dean. She herself had dragged in the Crusade, to which she referred so contemptuously.
"Miss Quisanté will do anything in the world for my husband," May interposed, "but nothing'll persuade her to say a good word for him."
"As long as that's understood, she does him no harm. We discount all you say, Miss Quisanté."
The Dean's affability was thrown away on Aunt Maria.
"I know what I'm talking about," she remarked grimly, "and as far as your Crusade goes, I should think you'd have seen it yourself by now."
The Dean had seen it himself by now, but he did not wish to say so in the presence of Quisanté's wife. May's laugh relieved him a little.
"The Dean's very forgiving," she said, "and Alexander's doing well now, anyhow, isn't he?"
The Dean agreed that he was doing well now—for in spite of his disclaimers of partisanship there was a spice of the fighting man in the Dean—and repeated Lady Castlefort's prophecy, reported to him by Lady Richard. The rusty black bonnet nodded approvingly. "I knew that was a sensible woman, in spite of her airs," said Miss Quisanté.