“We won’t believe that,” she said softly. “Something must happen.”
“I don’t exactly see what.”
“You ought to have married,” she declared. “When I think of the young women—heaps of them with any amount of money—who were in love with you! You ought to have married again.”
“I had the best reason in the world, dear Angèle, for remaining single,” he replied. “We won’t speak of that.”
She turned her head towards the window and her beautiful eyes were for a moment a little less clear. The window looked out on to a very pleasant strip of garden, almost of the cottage variety, crowded with flowers and with a long, narrow pergola still hung with roses. Inside, the room itself, with its grey walls and hangings, its few French etchings, the cabinet of choice china, seemed to possess also some measure of the distinction of its owner.
“Bring me my mirror and vanity case from the table, please, Bertram,” she begged. “Smoke, if you will. You will find your own make of cigarettes there.”
He did her bidding, his head almost touching the ceiling of the low room when he rose to his feet. Madame busied herself with a very exquisite little gold case, peering at herself meanwhile in the mirror.
“I have an idea,” Sir Bertram remarked, as he lit a cigarette, “that your brother dislikes me.”
“Why?”
He shrugged his shoulders.