“Nothing escapes his penetration.  He can perceive a haystack at an enormous distance when he is interested.”

I thought this was going rather too far, even to the borders of vulgarity; but Mills remained untroubled and only reached for his tobacco pouch.

“But that’s nothing to my mother’s interest.  She can never see a haystack, therefore she is always so surprised and excited.  Of course Dona Rita was not a woman about whom the newspapers insert little paragraphs.  But Allegre was the sort of man.  A lot came out in print about him and a lot was talked in the world about her; and at once my dear mother perceived a haystack and naturally became unreasonably absorbed in it.  I thought her interest would wear out.  But it didn’t.  She had received a shock and had received an impression by means of that girl.  My mother has never been treated with impertinence before, and the aesthetic impression must have been of extraordinary strength.  I must suppose that it amounted to a sort of moral revolution, I can’t account for her proceedings in any other way.  When Rita turned up in Paris a year and a half after Allegre’s death some shabby journalist (smart creature) hit upon the notion of alluding to her as the heiress of Mr. Allegre.  ’The heiress of Mr. Allegre has taken up her residence again amongst the treasures of art in that Pavilion so well known to the elite of the artistic, scientific, and political world, not to speak of the members of aristocratic and even royal families. . . ’ You know the sort of thing.  It appeared first in the Figaro, I believe.  And then at the end a little phrase:  ’She is alone.’  She was in a fair way of becoming a celebrity of a sort.  Daily little allusions and that sort of thing.  Heaven only knows who stopped it.  There was a rush of ‘old friends’ into that garden, enough to scare all the little birds away.  I suppose one or several of them, having influence with the press, did it.  But the gossip didn’t stop, and the name stuck, too, since it conveyed a very certain and very significant sort of fact, and of course the Venetian episode was talked about in the houses frequented by my mother.  It was talked about from a royalist point of view with a kind of respect.  It was even said that the inspiration and the resolution of the war going on now over the Pyrenees had come out from that head. . .  Some of them talked as if she were the guardian angel of Legitimacy.  You know what royalist gush is like.”

Mr. Blunt’s face expressed sarcastic disgust.  Mills moved his head the least little bit.  Apparently he knew.

“Well, speaking with all possible respect, it seems to have affected my mother’s brain.  I was already with the royal army and of course there could be no question of regular postal communications with France.  My mother hears or overhears somewhere that the heiress of Mr. Allegre is contemplating a secret journey.  All the noble Salons were full of chatter about that secret naturally.  So she sits down and pens an autograph:  ’Madame, Informed that you are proceeding to the place on which the hopes of all the right thinking people are fixed, I trust to your womanly sympathy with a mother’s anxious feelings, etc., etc.,’ and ending with a request to take messages to me and bring news of me. . .  The coolness of my mother!”