“It's a real business, and she has to live by it. Sometimes it's a worry.”
“But a business of her own!” She surveyed the confusion of his visage with a sweet intelligence. “Is it an amusing sort of business, Mr. Prothero?”
Prothero looked mulish. “My mother is a dressmaker,” he said. “In Brixton. She doesn't do particularly badly—or well. I live on my scholarship. I have lived on scholarships since I was thirteen. And you see, Lady Marayne, Brixton is a poor hunting country.”
Lady Marayne felt she had unmasked Prothero almost indecently. Whatever happened there must be no pause. There must be no sign of a hitch.
“But it's good at tennis,” she said. “You DO play tennis, Mr. Prothero?”
“I—I gesticulate,” said Prothero.
Lady Marayne, still in flight from that pause, went off at a tangent.
“Poff, my dear,” she said, “I've had a diving-board put at the deep end of the pond.”
The remark hung unanswered for a moment. The transition had been too quick for Benham's state of mind.
“Do you swim, Mr. Prothero?” the lady asked, though a moment before she had determined that she would never ask him a question again. But this time it was a lucky question.