“Were you here then?” asked Colin.
“Yes, and that was the first time I saw Stanier since I was seventeen. Your grandfather never spoke to me after my marriage, and for that matter, I wouldn’t have spoken to him. He was an old brute, my dear, was your grandfather, and Raymond’ll be as like him as two peas.”
“Not as two peas, darling,” said Colin, “as one pea to another pea.”
“Oh, bother your grammar,” said Lady Hester. “Speech is given us to show what we mean. You know what I mean well enough. But as soon as your grandfather died, Philip made me welcome here, and has made me welcome ever since. Yes, my dear, the first I saw of you, you were laughing, and you ain’t stopped since.”
“Did you know my mother?” asked Colin quietly.
He was getting on to his subject again, though Lady Hester was not aware of it.
“No. Never set eyes on her. Nobody of the family knew she existed until you were born, and less than a month after that she was dead. Your father had left home, one May or June it must have been, for he couldn’t stand your grandfather any more than I could, and not a word did any one but your grandmother hear of him, and that only to say it was a fine day, and he was well, till there came that telegram to say that he was married and had a pair of twins. Your grandfather was at dinner, sitting over his wine with your Uncle Ronald—he used to drink enough to make two men tipsy every night of his life—and up he got when your uncle read the telegram to him, and crash he went among the decanters, and that was the end of him. Then your mother died, and back came your father with you and Raymond, within a twelvemonth of the time he’d gone away. And not a word about that twelvemonth ever passes his lips.”
Colin let a suitable pause speak for the mildness of his interest in all this. “He must have been married, then, very soon after he went to Italy,” he said.
“Must have, my dear,” said Lady Hester.
It was exactly then that Colin began to see a faint outline, shrouded though it was by the mists of twenty years, that might prove to be the object of his exploration. Very likely it was only a mirage, some atmospheric phantom, but he intended to keep his eye on it, and, if possible, get nearer to it. A certain nuance of haste and promptitude with which Lady Hester had agreed to his comment perhaps brought it in sight.