“Gentlemen! Of course.”
And if Minna were there, she would say with honey and gall in her voice:
“Is Bennett Lawrie a gentleman?”
Mrs. Folyat would say, frigidly:
“He is very poor, but he is extremely well connected.”
Frederic would swagger a little, and say:
“After all, you know, it was I who brought him to the house.”
Then Minna:
“We all know that all Frederic’s friends are gentlemen—and ladies.”
It took Annette a little time to pick up the threads of all the family jokes and allusions, and to disentangle the personalities of the various outlying characters who were used for purposes of fun or bickering, or, occasionally, as a weapon to enforce silence. Not all of these personages came to the house, and some of them seemed only to have a shadowy existence in the family consciousness. There were two or three mysterious and almost mythical young men associated with Minna. Mary’s personality seemed to be filled out with a vague widower of mature years, who made mincing machines and was said to propose to her once a fortnight, Gertrude was altogether submerged in Bennett Lawrie, while, whenever Frederic became too obstreperous or offensive it was enough to breathe the name “Annie” to reduce him to a laconic moroseness. This Annie was the more real of all these extra-familiar characters, and Annette was very curious about her. She kept cropping up at the most out of the way moments, as every member of the family found it necessary at one time or another to remind Frederic of her existence. She was never given any surname, nor, apparently, was it known where she lived or how, or what she was to Frederic, or Frederic to her. Annette associated her absurdly with Sister Anne in Bluebeard, and from that again jumped to the cloud which was no bigger than a man’s hand. For no reason at all she regarded Annie as a figure of disaster and was vaguely sorry for her and pitied her. Her pity became concrete one day when an accident brought her nearer to Annie and gave her the whole story.