"What made you think that?"

"Cela se voit."

'That sees itself!' What a way of putting it! After twenty years of
a French wife Soames had still little sympathy with her language; a
theatrical affair and connected in his mind with all the refinements of
domestic irony.

"How?" he asked.

"You must know them; and you didn't make a sign. I saw them looking at
you."

"I've never seen the boy in my life," replied Soames with perfect truth.

"No; but you've seen the others, dear."

Soames gave her another look. What had she picked up? Had her Aunt
Winifred, or Imogen, or Val Dartie and his wife, been talking? Every
breath of the old scandal had been carefully kept from her at home, and
Winifred warned many times that he wouldn't have a whisper of it reach
her for the world. So far as she ought to know, he had never been
married before. But her dark eyes, whose southern glint and clearness
often almost frightened him, met his with perfect innocence.

"Well," he said, "your grandfather and his brother had a quarrel. The
two families don't know each other."