'That sees itself!' What a way of putting it!
After twenty years of a French wife Soames had still little sympathy with her language; a theatrical affair and connected in his mind with all the refinements of domestic irony.
"How?" he asked.
"You MUST know them; and you didn't make a sign. I saw them looking at you."
"I've never seen the boy in my life," replied Soames with perfect truth.
"No; but you've seen the others, dear."
Soames gave her another look. What had she picked up? Had her Aunt Winifred, or Imogen, or Val Dartie and his wife, been talking? Every breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept from her at home, and Winifred warned many times that he wouldn't have a whisper of it reach her for the world. So far as she ought to know, he had never been married before. But her dark eyes, whose southern glint and clearness often almost frightened him, met his with perfect innocence.
"Well," he said, "your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel. The two families don't know each other."
"How romantic!"
'Now, what does she mean by that?' he thought. The word was to him extravagant and dangerous—it was as if she had said: "How jolly!"