“She has started a sort of Salon des Causes Perdues in the Faubourg Saint Germain.” She was recording the vagaries of my aunt. The Duc laughed.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “what a menagerie—Carlists, and Orleanists, and Papal Blacks. I wonder she has not held a bazaar in favour of your White Rose League.”
“Ah, yes,” I echoed, “I have heard that she was mad about the divine right of kings.”
Miss Churchill rose, as ladies rise at the end of a dinner. I followed her out of the room, in obedience to some minute signal.
We were on the best of terms—we two. She mothered me, as she mothered everybody not beneath contempt or above a certain age. I liked her immensely—the masterful, absorbed, brown lady. As she walked up the stairs, she said, in half apology for withdrawing me.
“They’ve got things to talk about.”
“Why, yes,” I answered; “I suppose the railway matter has to be settled.” She looked at me fixedly.
“You—you mustn’t talk,” she warned.
“Oh,” I answered, “I’m not indiscreet—not essentially.”
The other three were somewhat tardy in making their drawing-room appearance. I had a sense of them, leaning their heads together over the edges of the table. In the interim a rather fierce political dowager convoyed two well-controlled, blond daughters into the room. There was a continual coming and going of such people in the house; they did with Miss Churchill social business of some kind, arranged electoral rarée-shows, and what not; troubled me very little. On this occasion the blond daughters were types of the sixties’ survivals—the type that unemotionally inspected albums. I was convoying them through a volume of views of Switzerland, the dowager was saying to Miss Churchill: