“Quite.”

If this was irony, it was also self-restraint, for it was to Catherine’s enthusiasm that I owed my own.  The debt was one of such magnitude as a life of devotion could scarcely have repaid, for to whom do we owe so much as to those who first lifted the scales from our eyes and awakened within us a soul for all such things?  Catherine had been to me what I instantly desired to become to this benighted beauty; but the desire was not worth entertaining, since I hardly expected to be many minutes longer on speaking terms with Mrs. Lascelles.  I recalled the fact that it was I who had broached the subject of Bob Evers and his mother, together with my unpalatable motive for so doing.  And I was seeking in my mind, against the grain, I must confess, for a short cut back to Bob, when Mrs. Lascelles suddenly led the way.

“I don’t think,” said she, “that Mr. Evers takes after his mother.”

“I’m afraid he doesn’t,” I replied, “in that respect.”

“And I am glad,” she said.  “I do like a boy to be a boy.  The only son of his mother is always in danger of becoming something else.  Tell me, Captain Clephane, are they very devoted to each other?”

There was some new note in that expressive voice of hers.  Was it merely wistful, was it really jealous, or was either element the product of my own imagination?  I made answer while I wondered: 

“Absolutely devoted, I should say; but it’s years since I saw them together.  Bob was a small boy then, and one of the jolliest.  Still I never expected him to grow up the charming chap he is now.”

Mrs. Lascelles sat gazing at the great curve of Theodule Glacier.  I watched her face.

“He is charming,” she said at length.  “I am not sure that I ever met anybody quite like him, or rather I am quite sure that I never did.  He is so quiet, in a way, and yet so wonderfully confident and at ease!”

“That’s Eton,” said I.  “He is the best type of Eton boy, and the best type of Eton boy,” I declared, airing the little condition with a flourish, “is one of the greatest works of God.”

“I daresay you’re right,” said Mrs. Lascelles, smiling indulgently; “but what is it?  How do you define it?  It isn’t ‘side,’ and yet I can quite imagine people who don’t know him thinking that it is.  He is cocksure of himself, but of nothing else; that seems to me to be the difference.  No one could possibly be more simple in himself.  He may have the assurance of a man of fifty, yet it isn’t put on; it’s neither bumptious nor affected, but just as natural in Mr. Evers as shyness and awkwardness in the ordinary youth one meets.  And he has the savoir faire not to ask questions!”