"Were you acquainted with any of his family?"
"Good heavens, no! Had he any family? I expect they are quite impossible: he never spoke of any relations. Not to me, at any rate. Why don't you ask Mrs. Haddington? She knew him so much better than I did!"
"Yes, I understand they were very old friends?"
"Oh, rather more than that, I think! Don't look so shocked! I told you he was very attractive, but not, of course, a marrying man. I don't blame Lilias at all: I daresay I should have done the same in her shoes. But that's the worst of that kind of an alliance. Enchanting while it lasts, but it doesn't generally survive the first wrinkle. And then to have a raving beauty for a daughter! I'm so thankful I never had any children: I should never have survived losing a lover to my daughter. No woman could! It would make one ridiculous. I do so much admire Lilias Haddington for managing to ignore the whole thing in that wonderfully cool way. Marvellous, isn't she? She never turns a hair!"
"She's a great friend of yours, isn't she?" said Hemingway.
"Oh - ! Such an exaggerated term to use! One knows her socially, just as one knows so many people!"
"You presented Miss Haddington last year, I think. At least, that's what I seem to remember being told."
"Yes. Yes, I rather took them up. Such a pretty girl, Cynthia Haddington!"
"Well, if you don't mind my saying so, Lady Nest, they must both of them feel they owe you a debt! Everyone knows that what you say goes in High Society."
She smiled uncertainly, and put up a hand as though to shade her eyes from the light. "How kind of you! I think someone must have asked me to call on Mrs. Haddington: it's always happening. So difficult to refuse! Then one drifts into a certain degree of intimacy, really without knowing it!"