“Hullo, kid!” he greeted his sister.

“Hullo yourself,” responded Sissie.

They shook hands. (They very rarely kissed.  However, Charlie kissed his mother.  Even he would not have dared not to kiss her.)

“Mater,” said he, “let me introduce you to Lady Massulam.”

Lady Massulam had been standing in the window.  She came forward with a pleasant, restrained smile and made the acquaintance of Charlie’s family; but she was not talkative.  Her presence, coming as a terrific surprise to the ladies of the Prohack family, and as a fairly powerful surprise to Mr. Prohack, completed the general constraint.  Mrs. Prohack indeed was somewhat intimidated by it.  Mrs. Prohack’s knowledge of Lady Massulam was derived exclusively from The Daily Picture, where her portrait was constantly appearing, on all sorts of pretexts, and where she was described as a leader of London society.  Mr. Prohack knew of her as a woman credited with great feats of war-work, and also with a certain real talent for organisation; further, he had heard that she had a gift for high finance, and exercised it not without profit.  As she happened to be French by birth, no steady English person was seriously upset by the fact that her matrimonial career was obscure, and as she happened to be very rich everybody raised sceptical eyebrows at the assertion that her husband (a knight) was dead; for The Daily Picture implanted daily in the minds of millions of readers the grand truth that to the very rich nothing can happen simply.  The whole Daily Picture world was aware that of late she had lived at the Grand Babylon Hotel in permanence.  That world would not have recognised her from her published portraits, which were more historical than actual.  Although conspicuously anti-Victorian she had a Victorian beauty of the impressive kind; she had it still.  Her hair was of a dark lustrous brown and showed no grey.  In figure she was tall, and rather more than plump and rather less than fat.  Her perfect and perfectly worn clothes proved that she knew just how to deal with herself.  She would look forty in a theatre, fifty in a garden, and sixty to her maid at dawn.

This important person spoke, when she did speak, with a scarcely perceptible French accent in a fine clear voice.  But she spoke little and said practically nothing:  which was a shock to Marian Prohack, who had imagined that in the circles graced by Lady Massulam conversation varied from badinage to profundity and never halted.  It was not that Lady Massulam was tongue-tied, nor that she was impolite; it was merely that with excellent calmness she did not talk.  If anybody handed her a subject, she just dropped it; the floor around her was strewn with subjects.

The lunch was dreadful, socially.  It might have been better if Charlie’s family had not been tormented by the tremendous question:  what had Charlie to do with Lady Massulam?  Already Charlie’s situation was sufficient of a mystery, without this arch-mystery being spread all over it.  And inexperienced Charlie was a poor host; as a host he was positively pathetic, rivalling Lady Massulam in taciturnity.