“Oh! all serene,” Jervaise returned, still with the sound of irritation in his voice, and continued as if the need for confidence had suddenly overborne his anger.  “As a matter of fact she’s his sister.”

“Whose sister?” I asked, quite at a loss.

“Oh!  Banks’s, of course,” he said.

“But who in the name of goodness is Banks?” I inquired irritably.  The petulant tone was merely an artifice.  I realised that if I were meek, he would lose more time in abusing my apparent imbecility.  I know that the one way to beat a bully is by bullying, but I hate even the pretence of that method.

Jervaise grunted as if the endeavour to lift the weight of my ignorance required an almost intolerable physical effort.

“Why, this fellow—­our chauffeur,” he said in a voice so threateningly restrained that he seemed on the point of bursting.

There was no help for it; I had to take the upper hand.

“Well, my good idiot,” I said, “you can’t expect me to know these things by intuition.  I’ve never heard of the confounded fellow before.  Haven’t even seen him, now.  Nor his sister—­Anne Banks, Frienderbrenda’s.”

Jervaise was calmed by this outburst.  This was the sort of attitude he could understand and appreciate.

“All right, keep your shirt on,” he replied quite amicably.

“If you’d condescend to explain,” I returned as huffily as I could.

“You see, this chap, Banks,” he began, “isn’t quite the ordinary chauffeur Johnnie.  He’s the son of one of our farmers.  Decent enough old fellow, too, in his way—­the father, I mean.  Family’s been tenants of the Home Farm for centuries.  And this chap, Banks, the son, has knocked about the world, no end.  Been in Canada and the States and all kinds of weird places.  He’s hard as nails; and keen.  His mother was a Frenchwoman; been a governess.”

“Is she dead?” I asked.

“Lord, no.  Why should she be?” Jervaise replied peevishly.

I thought of explaining that he had made the implication by his use of the past tense, but gave up the idea as involving a waste of energy.  “How old is this chap, Banks; the son?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Jervaise said.  “About twenty-five.”

“And his sister?” I prodded him.

“Rather younger than that,” he said, after an evident hesitation, and added:  “She’s frightfully pretty.”

I checked my natural desire to comment on the paradox; and tried the stimulation of an interested “Is she?”

“Rather.”  He tacked that on in the tone of one who deplores the inevitable; and went on quickly, “You needn’t infer that I’ve made an ass of myself or that I’m going to.  In our position...”  He abandoned that as being, perhaps, too obvious.  “What I mean to say is,” he continued, “that I can’t understand about Brenda.  And it was such an infernally silly way of going about things.  Admitted that there was no earthly chance of the pater giving his consent or anything like it; she needn’t in any case have made a damned spectacle of the affair.  But that’s just like her.  Probably did it all because she wanted to be dramatic or some rot.”