"Upon my word, I don't think it matters who anybody is in Cairo!" he said with a fine carelessness. "The people whose families are all guaranteed respectable are more lax in their behavior than the people one knows nothing about. As for the Princess Ziska, her extraordinary beauty and intelligence would give her the entree anywhere--even if she hadn't money to back those qualities up."
"She's enormously wealthy, I hear," said young Lord Fulkeward, another of the languid smokers, caressing his scarcely perceptible moustache. "My mother thinks she is a divorcee."
Sir Chetwynd looked very serious, and shook his fat head solemnly.
"Well, there is nothing remarkable in being divorced, you know," laughed Ross Courtney. "Nowadays it seems the natural and fitting end of marriage."
Sir Chetwynd looked graver still. He refused to be drawn into this kind of flippant conversation. He, at any rate, was respectably married; he had no sympathy whatever with the larger majority of people whose marriages were a failure.
"There is no Prince Ziska then?" he inquired. "The name sounds to me of Russian origin, and I imagined--my wife also imagined,--that the husband of the lady might very easily be in Russia while his wife's health might necessitate her wintering in Egypt. The Russian winter climate is inclement, I believe."
"That would be a very neat arrangement," yawned Lord Fulkeward. "But my mother thinks not. My mother thinks there is not a husband at all,--that there never was a husband. In fact my mother has very strong convictions on the subject. But my mother intends to visit her all the same."
"She does? Lady Fulkeward has decided on that? Oh, well, in THAT case!"--and Sir Chetwynd expanded his lower-chest air-balloon. "Of course, Lady Chetwynd Lyle can no longer have any scruples on the subject. If Lady Fulkeward visits the Princess there can be no doubt as to her actual STATUS."
"Oh, I don't know!" murmured Lord Fulkeward, stroking his downy lip. "You see my mother's rather an exceptional person. When the governor was alive she hardly ever went out anywhere, you know, and all the people who came to our house in Yorkshire had to bring their pedigrees with them, so to speak. It was beastly dull! But now my mother has taken to 'studying character,' don'cher know; she likes all sorts of people about her, and the more mixed they are the more she is delighted with them. Fact, I assure you! Quite a change has come over my mother since the poor old governor died!"