"I did not know," she said. "I have never been there. Lady Adeline knows my people, and used to come to our house a good deal at one time; that is where I met her, I like her very much—and trust her."
"That everybody does."
"Do you know her widowed sister, Lady Claudia Beaumont?"
"Yes,"
"And their brother, Lord Dawne?"
"Yes—well. He and I were 'chums' at Harrow and Oxford, and a common devotion to the same social subjects has kept us together since."
"He is a man of most charming manners," she said thoughtfully.
"He is," I answered cordially. "I know no one else so fastidiously refined, without being a prig."
She was sitting on the arm of a chair with Adeline's photograph in her hand, and was silent a moment, looking at it meditatively.
"You must know that eccentric 'Ideala,' as they call her, also?" she said at last, glancing up at me gravely.