Left alone with the widow, he surveyed her ample and worldly form.
“Get thee to a nunnery!” he said dejectedly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Yes. You have omitted ‘my lord.’”
Mrs. Bevelage looked pleased and puzzled. Possibly he was a count or baron.
“Do you know that stingy but magnificent edifice⸺”
“Yes⸺?”
“That handsome home of precarious ‘fracs’ in the Rue de Rennes⸺?”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand—” The widow had not got used to his composite tongue. She liked Kreisler, however.