III

“Oh, Crikey!” said my aunt, reading a letter behind her coffee-machine. “Here’s a young woman, George!”

We were breakfasting together in the big window bay at Lady Grove that looks upon the iris beds; my uncle was in London.

I sounded an interrogative note and decapitated an egg.

“Who’s Beatrice Normandy?” asked my aunt. “I’ve not heard of her before.”

“She the young woman?”

“Yes. Says she knows you. I’m no hand at old etiquette, George, but her line is a bit unusual. Practically she says she’s going to make her mother—”

“Eh? Step-mother, isn’t it?”

“You seem to know a lot about her. She says ‘mother’—Lady Osprey. They’re to call on me, anyhow, next Wednesday week at four, and there’s got to be you for tea.”

“Eh?”