The moment she had spoken Tabs had recognized that nothing that she had done or might do could obscure her atmosphere of breeding. He had met men like that, whose sense of race, even when they were at the lowest depths, had kept them superior to their environment. A pale woman of spun silk and gossamer, with cornflower eyes and lips like parted poppy-petals! This woman could be kind to the point of folly—so kind that her folly would appear almost virtue. She was a woman who, though she might love too often, would love so much that to her much would always be forgiven.
"I must apologize," Tabs spoke gently, "for having been found staring at your picture."
He did not know it, but men always spoke gently to Maisie. It was her air of trust and helplessness that did it, her tender trick of creating in each man the belief that she relied peculiarly on him for protection—all of which was totally at variance with the masterly efficiency with which she ran both herself and her house.
"I was staring at your picture," Tabs continued, "because I thought I recognized——"
"I daresay you did," Maisie interrupted. "Though you may not have met her, her face is forever in the papers. Among the family she's known as the Princess Czarina Bolsheviki——"
"She looks it. But is she a princess?"
Maisie laughed. "Not yet, but it won't be her fault if she isn't. It'll have to be a prince next time.
If she marries again, she'll stoop to nothing less. Look at the way she carries her head; she almost feels the weight of her coronet already. But she says she's had enough of marriage. We've all said that. Poor dear Di, she misses a lot of fun by her exclusiveness. If I only had half her wealth——"
She evidently wanted Tabs to ask her what she would do with it. Her eyes grew round with spendthrift promises of jolliness, if ever such wealth should come within reach of her tiny, managing hands. She looked as mischievously covetous as a magpie while she waited for him to put the obvious question.
But Tabs wasn't interested in the obvious. He stuck to his enquiry. "What you've told me doesn't help me to recall her," he said. "Who is she? It's most annoying to recognize a face and not to be able to place it against any background."