He looked at her again, and a vague resemblance both in speech and in the shape of her head struck him.
"I will guess," he said, "you are a relation of Nadine's."
"Quite right: go on."
Seymour was suddenly agitated and upset a glass of champagne that had just been filled. He took not the slightest notice of this.
"Is it too much to hope that you are the aunt who—who had so many snuff-boxes?" he asked. "I mean the one to whom the Emperor gave all those lovely snuff-boxes? Or is it too good to be true?"
"Just good enough," she said.
"How wildly exciting! Will you come back to my flat as soon as we can escape from this purgatory and Antoinette shall manicure you. Do tell me about the snuff-boxes; I am sure they were beauties, or you would not—I mean the Emperor would not have given you them."
"Of course not. But I am afraid I can't come to your flat to-night, as I am going to a dance. Ask me another day. I hear you have got some lovely jade and are going to make it the fashion. Then I suppose you will sell it."
Seymour determined to insure his jade before Countess Eleanor entered his rooms, for fear of its subsequently appearing that the Austrian Emperor had followed up his present of snuff-boxes with a present of jade. But he let no suspicion mar the cordiality of his tone.
"Yes, that's the idea," he said. "You see no younger son can possibly live in the way he has been brought up unless he has done something honest and commercial like that, or cheats at bridge. But that is so difficult I am told. You have to learn bridge first, and then go to a conjurer, during which time you probably forget bridge again. But otherwise you can't live at all unless you marry and the only thing left to do is to take to drink and die."