"Oh my," Ophelia said, letting Phyri's assumptions wash over her as she reached to pour Nova her tea. She remained quiet, with her expression one of both shock and curiosity, as she carefully poured from the pot. The tea was a wonderful distraction as it gave her enough time to sit and soak in the possibilities offered by the scandal Phyri had posited. It was a thoughtless task, so couldn't distract her; she'd had Nova over for tea so often that she didn't even need to ask her friend how she wanted the cup fixed.

"She's too young to be Miss Selwyn's mother, of course," Ophelia said. The noblewoman was Ophelia's age, or close to it, and Miss Selwyn had just graduated Hogwarts, which meant it was biologically impossible — otherwise she might have entertained it, no matter how unlikely it was for such a scandal to have gone uncovered so long. "But that is such a delicious idea, isn't it? No one knows who Miss Selwyn's mother actually was. Do you think she could be her aunt?"

As much as she wanted this to be true, Ophelia wasn't sure that avenue would work, either; the countess didn't have older sisters that she knew of. Theoretically Miss Selwyn could have been her sister — but then why wouldn't the mother's family have kept her, instead of foisting her off to the Selwyns? No, the mother had to either be destitute or facing an unimaginable scandal to make sending the bastard off to be known as such for her entire life the better option.

"Well, there's something to that, I imagine," she said decisively, although she was more or less giving up on determining what it was. Maybe there would be a rumor sooner or later in Witch Weekly that she could latch on to. "But I'll have to assume I misunderstood her, whether I did or not. There's no polite way to decline when she wasn't even coming right out and asking."