"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Eliott, in a tone which implied that when Anne did see them——
"Are they very dreadful?"
"Well—they're not your sort."
Anne meditated. "Not—my—sort. And the Lawson Hannays, what sort are they?"
"Well, we don't know them. But there are a great many people in Scale one doesn't know."
"Are they socially impossible, or what?"
"Oh—socially, they would be considered—in Scale—all right. But he is, or was, mixed up with some very queer people."
Anne's cold face intimated that the adjective suggested nothing to her. Mrs. Eliott was compelled to be explicit. The word queer was applied in Scale to persons of dubious honesty in business; whereas it was not so much in business as in pleasure that Mr. Lawson Hannay had been queer.
"Mr. Hannay may be very steady now, but I believe he belonged to a very fast set before he married her."
"And she? Is she nice?"