"Yes, yes, of course," said Tinker, humouring her again. "He's--he's a
commercial gentleman."
Lady Beauleigh could find no words. Never in the course of her
domineering life had she been raised to such an exaltation of
whole-souled exasperation. She could only glare at the suave disposer
of her long-cherished, long-asserted pretensions; and she glared with a
fury which made Elsie, who had edged little by little to the extreme
edge of the seat, rise softly and take up a safer position, standing
three yards away.
Tinker took advantage of Lady Beauleigh's helpless speechlessness to
say thoughtfully, "But about your being my grandmother? If you're not
my father's mother or my mother's mother, you can't really be my
grandmother. You must be my step-grandmother.
"I should think," Tinker went on, and his thoughtfulness became a
thoughtful earnestness, "that you must be what people call a connection
by marriage; not quite one of the family."
The thoughtfulness cleared from Tinker's brow, and he said with a
pleasant smile, "But that's got nothing to do with what you came to
talk about. You said it was important. What did you want to say?"
Lady Beauleigh remembered suddenly that she had come on an errand
connected with her promotion of the glory of the Beauleighs.
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