VII


There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should make
her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with a
click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intensely
poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an Englishwoman:
dissimulation would be her second nature; you could trust her to pull
the wool over your eyes with a fleet and practised hand. Instinctively,
furthermore, she would seek to extract from such a situation all the fun
it promised. Taken off her guard, for the span of ten heart-beats she
sat up straight and stared; but with the eleventh her attitude relaxed.
She had regained her outward nonchalance, and resolved upon her system
of fence.

"Ah," she said, on a tone judiciously compounded of feminine artlessness
and of forthright British candour, and with a play of the eyebrows that
attributed her momentary suscitation to the workings of memory, "of
course--Blanchemain. The Sussex Blanchemains. I expect there's only one
family of the name?"

"I've never heard of another," assented the young man.

"The Ventmere Blanchemains," she pursued pensively. "Lord Blanchemain of
Ventmere is your titled head?"

"Exactly," said he.