And Lola nodded with entire agreement, adding, “Simpky is a good man.”
“So there’s nothing in that, then? Is that what you mean?”
“Nothing,” replied Lola.
And Miss Breezy gave a sigh of relief. It was bad enough for her niece to have become a lady’s maid.
Would she go now? Or was there something else at the back of her mind?
For several minutes Miss Breezy babbled rather garrulously about a number of quite extraneous things. She talked about the soldiers in the park, the coal strike, what was likely to happen during the summer, the effect of unemployment on prices, all obviously for the purpose of presently pouncing hawk-like on the unsuspecting Lola,—who, as a matter of fact, had no intention of falling into any trap. “In yesterday’s Daily Looking Glass,” she said suddenly, “there was a short paragraph that set me thinking. I don’t remember the exact wording but it was something like this. ‘A short time ago a beautiful young French woman, bearing a name which occupies several interesting chapters in the past history of her country, paid a brief visit to London, dined at the Savoy with one of our best known generals and disappeared as though she had melted with the morning dew. The said general, we hear on the best authority, was distraught and conducted several days’ search for his dinner companion. Inquiries were made at every hotel in town without success until the name of de Brézé became quite well known.”
Lola had caught her breath at the beginning of this quotation which Miss Breezy obviously knew by heart, and had metaphorically clapped her hand over her mouth to prevent herself from crying out. But knowing that her aunt would turn round and fix her analytical eye upon her, Lola immediately adopted an attitude of mild impersonal interest.
The eye duly came, in fact both eyes, and they found Lola polite and unconcerned, the well-trained lady’s maid who was forced to listen to the gossip of her overseer. So that was what it was! Good Heavens, how much did this woman know? And was she, acting on instinct, going to stay in that room until it would be too late for Lola to dress and keep her appointment “with one of our best known generals”? Never before had Lola hung so breathlessly on her aunt’s words.
“Did you read these lines by any chance?”
“No,” said Lola.