Lady Turnour had lately quarrelled with a maid and dismissed her, Lady Kilmarny told me.  Now, she was in immediate need of another, French (because French maids are fashionable) able to speak English, because the Turnour family had as yet mastered no other language.  Lady Kilmarny believed that this was the honeymoon of the newly married pair, and that, after having paused on the wing at Cannes, for a little billing and cooing, they intended to pursue their travels in France for some weeks, before returning to settle down in England.  “Her Ladyship” was asking everybody with whom she had contrived to scrape acquaintance (especially if they had titles) to recommend her a maid.  Lady Kilmarny, as a member of the League against Cruelty to Animals, had determined that nothing would induce her to throw any poor mouse to this cat, even if she heard of a mouse plying for hire; but here was I in a dreadful scrape, professing myself ready to snap at anything except Corn Plasters; and she felt bound to mention that the mousetrap was open, the cheese waiting to be nibbled.

“Do you think she’d have me?” I asked—­“the quaint creature, her ladyship?”

“Only too likely that she would,” said Lady Kilmarny.  “But remember, the worst is, she doesn’t know she’s a quaint creature.  She is quite happy about herself, offensively happy, and would consider you the ‘creature.’  A truly awful person, my dear.  A man in this hotel—­the little thing you saw me talking to this morning, knows all about them both.  I think they began in Peckham or somewhere.  They would, you know, and call it ‘S.W.’  She was a chemist’s daughter, and he was the humble assistant, long before the Pill materialized, so she refused him, and married a dashing doctor.  But unfortunately he dashed into the bankruptcy court, and afterward she probably nagged him to death.  Anyway he died—­but not till long after Sam Turner had taken pity on some irrelevant widow, as his early love was denied him.  The widow had a boy, to whom the stepfather was good—­(really a very decent person according to his lights!) and kept on making pills and millions, until last year he lost his first wife and got a knighthood.  The old love was a widow by this time, taking in lodgers in some neighbourhood where you do take lodgers, and Sir Samuel found and gathered her like a late rose.  Naturally she puts on all the airs in the world, and diamonds in the morning.  She’ll treat you like the dirt under her feet, because that’s her conception of her part—­and yours.  But I’ll introduce you to her if you like.”

After a little reflection, I did like; but as it seemed to me that there’d better not be two airs in the family, I said that I’d put on none at all, and make no pretensions.

“She’s the kind that doesn’t know a lady or gentleman without a label,” my kind friend warned me.  “You must be prepared for that.”

“I’ll be prepared for anything,” I assured her.  But when it came to the test, I wasn’t quite.