“Not exactly, dear,” said Lady Tamplin; “but this girl, this Katherine Grey, is actually a cousin of mine. One of the Worcestershire Greys, the Edgeworth lot. My very own cousin! Fancy!”
“Ah-ha,” said Lenox.
“And I was wondering—” said her mother.
“What there is in it for us,” finished Lenox, with that sideways smile that her mother always found difficult to understand.
“Oh, darling,” said Lady Tamplin, on a faint note of reproach.
It was very faint, because Rosalie Tamplin was used to her daughter’s outspokenness and to what she called Lenox’s uncomfortable way of putting things.
“I was wondering,” said Lady Tamplin, again drawing her artistically pencilled brows together, “whether—oh, good morning, Chubby darling: are you going to play tennis? How nice!”
Chubby, thus addressed, smiled kindly at her, remarked perfunctorily, “How topping you look in that peach-coloured thing,” and drifted past them and down the steps.
“The dear thing,” said Lady Tamplin, looking affectionately after her husband. “Let me see, what was I saying? Ah!” She switched her mind back to business once more. “I was wondering—”
“Oh, for God’s sake get on with it. That is the third time you have said that.”
“Well, dear,” said Lady Tamplin, “I was thinking that it would be very nice if I wrote to dear Katherine and suggested that she should pay us a little visit out here. Naturally, she is quite out of touch with Society. It