Just as the pair were passing the entrance to the Casino, a stout, middle-aged, very smartly-dressed woman halted and spoke to Sylvia.
“Well, Madame Claudet!” the girl cried. “Why--how long have you been over in Europe?”
“About four months,” she replied, speaking broken English with a strong French accent. “My husband died, you know.”
“What?” exclaimed Sylvia. “Mr. Claudet dead!”
And for the first time she noticed that the lady was in mourning.
“He died of heart failure, suddenly--in the street in New York,” the rather handsome widow said. Then when Sylvia had expressed her condolence, she turned and introduced Geoffrey.
“I’m at the Hôtel des Terrasses,” Madame Claudet said to the girl. “Where are you staying?”
Sylvia told her, and begged her to call upon her mother that afternoon.
“We shall be so very delighted to see you again,” she added. “Mother has often spoken of you, and recalled our gay days together at Palm Beach.”
Madame promised to call, and then, when Sylvia and Geoffrey walked on, the girl said:
“Poor Madame Claudet! I’m so sorry! Her husband was a very wealthy man. They had a lot of valuable property, I believe, in Brazil. We knew her in Florida. I’m so glad we’ve come across her. I shall ask mother to invite her to go with us to Touraine.”
At luncheon Geoffrey met Lord Hendlewycke, whom, of course, he had known in London. All the men who went up and down St. James’s Street knew Hendlewycke as a very hard-up peer, who was glad to get dinners and luncheons at other people’s expense. How he lived nobody exactly knew, for he was believed not to possess the proverbial “bean.” Yet he was a bright optimist, with a fund of amusing anecdotes, and very popular with hostesses of all sorts.
In the afternoon the French widow called upon Mrs. Beverley, and was received with great enthusiasm. At tea Geoffrey met her again, and afterwards agreed with Sylvia that she was a most charming person. She had been born in the Alpes Maritimes, but had been taken to America by her parents when she was about eighteen, and had married a Mr. Claudet, an American, whose father had been French. Hence she possessed all the natural _chic_ of the Frenchwoman, combined with the go-ahead characteristics of the American.