Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale Fire, Ada and other Nabokov works here.
Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) asks his father where did he get his tan:
Demon shed his monocle and wiped his eyes with the modish lace-frilled handkerchief that lodged in the heart pocket of his dinner jacket. His tear glands were facile in action when no real sorrow made him control himself.