world, no end. Been in Canada and the States and all kinds of weird
places. He's hard as nails; and keen. His mother was a Frenchwoman; been a
governess."

"Is she dead?" I asked.

"Lord, no. Why should she be?" Jervaise replied peevishly.

I thought of explaining that he had made the implication by his use of the
past tense, but gave up the idea as involving a waste of energy. "How old
is this chap, Banks; the son?" I asked.

"I don't know," Jervaise said. "About twenty-five."

"And his sister?" I prodded him.

"Rather younger than that," he said, after an evident hesitation, and
added: "She's frightfully pretty."

I checked my natural desire to comment on the paradox; and tried the
stimulation of an interested "_Is_ she?"

"Rather." He tacked that on in the tone of one who deplores the
inevitable; and went on quickly, "You needn't infer that I've made an ass
of myself or that I'm going to. In our position..." He abandoned that as
being, perhaps, too obvious. "What I mean to say is," he continued, "that
I can't understand about Brenda. And it was such an infernally silly way
of going about things. Admitted that there was no earthly chance of the
pater giving his consent or anything like it; she needn't in any case have
made a damned spectacle of the affair. But that's just like her. Probably