"That's another thing," said Mrs. Dew, dropping her voice mysteriously, "as I feel you ought to know, and that is, Jane-Anne's father was a Grecian."
"Really," Mr. Wycherly remarked, evidently quite unmoved by what Mrs. Dew considered a most damaging fact. "A Greek; how interesting! What was his name?"
"Staff rides," Mrs. Dew answered promptly. "At least that's what I call it, but he called it something longer. I've tried to English it as much as possible to match her really respectable Christian name."
"Do you happen to remember how it was spelt?" Mr. Wycherly asked.
"Yes, sir, S-T-A-V-R-I-D-E-S."
"Ah," Mr. Wycherly exclaimed; "now I've got it. Stavrides. Quite a common Greek name. What part of Greece did he come from?"
"Athens, sir, an' it was there he met my sister, who was lady's maid to Mrs. Methuen's cousin. She'd been schoolroom-maid first of all, then when the young ladies grew up, they had her taught dressmaking and hairdressin' and took her everywhere with them. And when Lady Lettice married she took my sister Jane with her, and they travelled a lot, an' in Athens there was a carriage accident and my sister was thrown out and stunned, and this young man was passing and he picked her up, and it seems he fell in love with her there and then, for all her eye was swole up with the bump she got—she was a very-good-looking girl was Jane—anyway, 'e never rested till 'e'd married 'er. He was, I suppose, in a rather better position than she was, though, from bein' with the young ladies so constant, my sister seemed to have caught their pretty ways, and spoke exactly like them. She wasn't a bit like me," said Mrs. Dew simply, "you'd never 'ave thought we was sisters."
"What was Stavrides?" Mr. Wycherly asked.
"A sort of writer, sir, for newspapers. When they got married he came to London, and he was correspondent for some paper, some Grecian paper. It isn't a trade I thinks much on, but he earned good money and he insured his life heavy. And then, just like him it was, he forgot to pay the premium, fell ill and died all of a hurry when Jane-Anne was but four-year-old, and my sister was left without anything at all but some forty pounds they 'ad in the bank."
"Poor thing," said Mr. Wycherly. "What did she do?"