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 fa