"Yes, she is," answered Hillyard.
"And what a fright she is making of herself! She isn't dressed at all, is she? She is just—protected by her clothes."
Hillyard laughed and Millicent Splay sighed. "And I did hope she would have got over it all by Goodwood. But no! Really I could slap her. But I might have known! Joan never does things by halves."
"She seems thorough," said Hillyard, although he remembered, with some doubts as to the truth of his comment, moments now and again when more primitive impulses had bubbled up in Joan Whitworth.
"Thorough! Yes, that's the word. Oh, Mr. Hillyard, there was a time when she really dressed—dressed, you understand. My word, she was thorough then, too. I remember coming out of the Albert Hall on a Melba afternoon, when we could get nothing but a hansom cab, and a policeman actually had to lift her up into it like a big baby because her skirt was so tight. And look at her now!"
Millicent Splay thumped the side of the car in her vexation.
"But you mustn't think she's a fool." Lady Splay turned menacingly on the silent Hillyard.
"But I don't," he protested.
"That's the last thing to say about her."
"I never said it," declared Martin Hillyard.