Angela blushed again, and her lip trembled a little. Than she said softly:
"To Whitechapel! That is very interesting to me. Because, Lord Jocelyn, I belong to Whitechapel myself."
"Do you?" She might as well have said that she belonged to Seven Dials. In fact, much better, because in his young days, his Corinthian days, Lord Jocelyn had often repaired to Seven Dials to see noble sportsmen chez Ben Caunt, and rat-killing, and cock-fighting, and many other beautiful forms of sport. "Do you really? Do you belong to that remarkable part of London?"
"Certainly. My grandfather—did you know him?"
Lord Jocelyn shook his head.
"He had the brewery, you know, Messenger, Marsden & Company, in Whitechapel. He was born there, and always called himself a Whitechapel man. He seemed to be proud of it, so that in common filial respect I, too, should be proud of it. I am, in fact, a Whitechapel granddaughter."
"But that does not seem to help my unlucky Harry."
"It gives one a little more sympathy, perhaps," she said. "And that is, you know, so very useful a possession."
"Yes," but he did not seem to recognize its usefulness as regards his ward. "Well, he went to Whitechapel with a light heart. He would look round him, make the acquaintance of his own people, then he would come back again, and we would go on just as usual. At least he did not exactly say this, but I understood him so. Because it seemed impossible that a man who had once lived in society, among ourselves, and formed one of us, could ever dream of living down there." Angela laughed. From her superior knowledge of "down there," she laughed.