Sir Charles thanked her, awkwardly, and fell silent again, pulling his moustache.
"Is—Mrs. Leeds—well?" he ventured, at length, reddening again.
"'Is—Mrs. Leeds—well?' he ventured at length, reddening again."
"Perfectly. She's a bit wiry just now—thin—leggy, y' know. Some fanciers prefer 'em weedy. But she'll plump up. I know the breed."
He shrank from her loud voice and the vulgarity of her comments, and she was aware of it and didn't care a rap. There were plenty of noble ladies as vulgar as she, and more so—and anyway it was not this well-built, sober-faced man of forty-five whom she was serving with all the craft and insolence and brutality and generosity that was in her—it was the son of a dead man who had been much to her. How much nobody in these days gossiped about any longer, for it was a long time ago, a long, long time ago that she had made her curtsey to a young queen and a prince consort. And Sir Charles's father had died at Majuba Hill.
"There's a wretched little knock-kneed peer on the cards," she observed; "Dankmere. He seems to think she has money or something. If he comes over here, as my sister writes, I'll set him straighter than his own legs. And I've written Foxy to tell him so."
"Dankmere is a very good chap," said Sir Charles, terribly embarrassed.
"But not good enough. His level is the Quartier d'Europe. He'll find it; no fear.... When do you go South?"