“Ang——”
“Not so much through your nose. This way—‘An-gèle.’”
The next effort was better, but tuition halted abruptly when Martin discovered that Angèle’s mother, instead of being “Mrs. Saumarez,” was “the Baroness Irma von Edelstein.”
“Oh, crikey!” he blurted out. “How can that be?”
Angèle laughed at his blank astonishment.
“Mamma is a German baroness,” she explained. “My papa was a colonel in the British army, but mamma did not lose her courtesy title when she married. Of course, she is Mrs. Saumarez, too.”
These subtleties of Burke and the Almanach de Gotha went over Martin’s head.
“It sounds a bit like an entry in a stock catalogue,” he said.
Angèle, in turn, was befogged, but saw instantly that the village youth was not sufficiently reverent to the claims of rank.
“You can never be a gentleman unless you learn these things,” she announced airily.