“She told me that you snubbed her,” he said. “But you don’t seem to be consistent, Aunt Cornelia. I hear that you’ve been civil and kind to another actress. I mean Eris Odell.”
“Do you know her?” inquired his aunt calmly.
“I’ve met her.”
Mrs. Grandcourt remained silent for a while, her pale eyes fixed on her nephew.
“That girl’s grandmother was my beloved comrade in boarding school,” she said slowly. “We shared the same room. Her name was Jeanne d’Espremont. Her grandmother was that celebrated Countess of the time of Louis XV.... They were Louisiana Creoles. Her blood was as good as any in France. Probably that means nothing to a modern young man.... It meant something to me.... I shouldn’t have wished to love a nobody as I loved Jeanne d’Espremont.”
Mrs. Grandcourt bent her head and looked down at her celebrated Victorian hands. Pearls bulged on the tiny, fat fingers.
“Jeanne ran away,” she said. “She married the son of a planter. His family was unimpeachable, but he looked like a fox. When he drank himself to death she went on the stage.
“She had a baby. I saw it. It looked like a female fox. Jeanne died when the girl was sixteen.... I’d have taken her,——”
Presently Annan asked why she hadn’t done so.
“Because,” said his aunt, “she married a boy who peddled vegetables the day after the funeral. His name was Odell.”