“Yes.”
“Did you know her husband?”
“No. He died several years ago.”
“But you have known her a good while?”
“Only a year or two.”
“Is she entirely English? I sometimes think——”
“Yes?”
“I was only going to say she sometimes gives me the impression that she has a foreign strain.”
“If Australians are ‘foreigners,’” La Planta said lightly, “then she has a ‘foreign’ strain, because her parents were Australians—they were sheep farmers in Queensland.”
“You don’t say so. That no doubt accounts for the queer expressions she sometimes uses. They were rich people, no doubt.”