Palliser's side glance at him was observant indeed.He asked himself how much the man could know.Taking the past into consideration, Lady Joan might turn out to be a subject requiring delicate handling.It was not the easiest thing in the world to talk at all freely to a person with whom one desired to keep on good terms, about a young woman supposed still to cherish a tragic passion for the dead man who ought to stand at the present moment in the person's, figuratively speaking, extremely ill-fitting shoes.
"Lady Joan has been from her first season an undeniable beauty," he replied.
"She and the old lady are going to stay at a place called Asshawe Holt.I think they're going next week," Tembarom said.
"The old lady?" repeated Captain Palliser.
"I mean her mother.The one that's the Countess of Mallowe.""Have you met Lady Mallowe?" Palliser inquired with a not wholly repressed smile.A vision of Lady Mallowe over-hearing their conversation arose before him.
"No, I haven't.What's she like?"
"She is not the early- or mid-Victorian old lady," was Palliser's reply."She wears Gainsborough hats, and looks a quite possible eight and thirty.She is a handsome person herself."He was not aware that the term "old lady" was, among Americans of the class of Mrs.Bowse's boarders, a sort of generic term signifying almost anything maternal which had passed thirty.
Tembarom proceeded.
"After they get through at the Asshawe Holt place, I've asked them to come here.""Indeed," said Palliser, with an inward start.The man evidently did not know what other people did.After all, why should he? He had been selling something or other in the streets of New York when the thing happened, and he knew nothing of London.
"The countess called on Miss Alicia when we were in London," he heard next."She said we were relations.""You are--as we are.The connection is rather distant, but it is near enough to form a sort of link.""I've wanted to see Lady Joan," explained Tembarom."From what I've heard, I should say she was one of the 'Lady's Pictorial' kind.""I am afraid--" Palliser's voice was slightly unsteady for the moment--"I have not studied the type sufficiently to know.The 'Pictorial' is so exclusively a women's periodical."His companion laughed.
"Well, I've only looked through it once myself just to find out.Some way I always think of Lady Joan as if she was like one of those Beaut's from Beautsville, with trains as long as parlor-cars and feathers in their heads--dressed to go to see the queen.I guess she's been presented at court," he added.
"Yes, she has been presented."
"Do they let 'em go more than once?" he asked with casual curiosity.
"Confound this cough!" exclaimed Captain Palliser, and he broke forth again.
"Take another G," said Tembarom, producing his tube."Say, just take the bottle and keep it in your pocket"When the brief paroxysm was over and they moved on again, Palliser was looking an odd thing or so in the face."I always think of Lady Joan"was one of them."Always" seemed to go rather far.How often and why had he "always thought"? The fellow was incredible.Did his sharp, boyish face and his slouch conceal a colossal, vulgar, young ambition?