Mrs. Lambert looked bewildered, but was too much affaired with her own thoughts to ask for an explanation of what seemed to her a strange term in cookery.
“Did he know Francie Fitzpatrick much in Dublin?” she said after a pause, in which she had given a saucerful of cream and sopped cake to her dog.
Charlotte looked at her hostess suddenly and searchingly as she stooped with difficulty to take up the saucer.
“He’s known her since she was a child,” she replied, and waited for further developments.
“I thought it must be that way,” said Mrs. Lambert with a dissatisfied sound in her voice; “they’re so very familiar-like talking to each other.”
Charlotte’s heart paused for an instant in its strong, regular course. Was it possible, she thought, that wisdom was being perfected in the mouth of Lucy Lambert?
“I never noticed anything so wonderfully familiar,” she said, in a tone meant to provoke further confidence; “I never knew Roddy yet that he wasn’t civil to a pretty girl; and as for Francie, any man comes handy to her! Upon my word, she’d dote on a tongs, as they say!”
Mrs. Lambert fidgeted nervously with her long gold watchchain. “Well, Charlotte,” she said, a little defiantly, “I’ve been married to him five years now, and I’ve never known him particular with any girl.”
“Then, my dear woman, what’s this nonsense you’re talking about him and Francie?” said Charlotte, with Mephistophelian gaiety.
“Oh, Charlotte!” said Mrs. Lambert, suddenly getting very red, and beginning to whimper, “I never thought to speak of it—” she broke off and began to look for her handkerchief, while her respectable middle-aged face began to wrinkle up like a child’s, “and, indeed, I don’t want to say anything against the girl, for she’s a nice girl, and so I’ve always found her, but I can’t help noticing—” she broke off again.