Perhaps it was because Giles sat there, his pipe between his teeth, his feet propped up against the mantelpiece, his hand, as he perused the tome upon his knees, raised now and then to rub his hair on end, that it seemed so irrelevant to write about such things. After all what business was it of Maman’s? She had had no further use for them than that they should warm and feed her child during a hard winter; what difference did their status make to her? It was true that she and Maman had always shared impressions to the last crumb of analysis, and it was with a slight sense of _malice_ that she thus withheld from her the crumb for which she asked more than once. “Who are they? What are they, _ma chérie_?” Maman, from Cannes, inquired. “The _train de vie_ you described seems that of the true _confort anglais_; but, apparently, there is no elegance. What are their _relations_? Do they go at all _dans le monde_? Is there a _vie de château_ in the neighbourhood? I am interested in all you have to tell me of these excellent people.” Naturally. But though Alix might not have felt it unmeet, a month ago, to tell Maman all this, she would have felt it unmeet now. How funny Giles would have thought it if he had known that she sat there informing Maman that his family did not go _dans le monde_ at all, in the sense that Maman meant by _le monde_; and that they were decidedly of the _bourgeoisie_. It was not that Maman was wrong in wanting to know, or that Giles would have been right in thinking that _le monde_ didn’t matter. It was simply that she did not care to write in that way to Maman about him and his family.