So they were College parents.
Whose? Lucy wondered, watching them over the rim of her coffee cup.
Beau's, perhaps. Oh, no; Beau was rich, of course. Then whose?
She wouldn't mind giving them to Dakers, but there were objections. That tow-head could not be sired by that dark grave man; nor could that adult and intelligent woman have given birth to the through-other piece of nonsense that was Dakers.
And then, quite suddenly, she knew whose eyebrows those were.
Mary Innes's.
They were Mary Innes's parents. And in some odd way they explained Mary Innes. Her gravity; her air of belonging to a century other than this one; her not finding life very amusing. To have standards to live up to, but to have little money to live up to them with, was not a happy combination for a girl burdened with the need to make a success of her training.
Into the silence that had succeeded Miss Nevill's departure, Lucy heard her own voice saying: "Forgive me, but is your name Innes?"
They turned to her, puzzled for a moment; then the woman smiled. "Yes," she said. "Have we met somewhere?"
"No," said poor Lucy, growing a little pink as she always did when her impulsiveness had led her into an unexpected situation. "But I recognised your husband's eyebrows."