“Yes, really I do. That old woman in the black wig over there, for instance, intrigues me. Where can she come from? Who can she be?”
Miss Briggs looked carelessly round, and at once understood the reason of Lady Sellingworth’s remarks. “The man” was before her, and she knew it. How? She could not have said. Had she been asked she would probably have replied: “My bones told me.”
“Oh,” she said, after the look. “She’s the type of old woman who is born and brought up in Brazil, and who, when she is faded, comes to European spas for her health. I have met many of her type at Aix and Baden Baden.”
“Ah!” replied Lady Sellingworth carelessly. “You don’t know her then?”
“No. But I have seen her two or three times within the last few months—three times to be exact. Twice she has travelled in the same train as I was in, though not in the same compartment, and once I saw her dining here. Each time she was with that marvelously handsome young man. I really noticed her—don’t blame me—because of him.”
“Perhaps he’s her son.”
“He may be her husband.”
“Oh—but the difference in their ages! She must be seventy at least, if not more.”
“She may be very rich, too,” said Miss Briggs dryly.
Lady Sellingworth remembered that it was always said that Miss Briggs’s enormous fortune had kept her a spinster. She was generally supposed to be one of those unfortunately cynical millionairesses who are unable to believe in man’s disinterested affection.