"He's in love!" I thought, and caught sight of the lady to whom he was waving his hand.
"Why, you've married Gaby Lorraine!" I cried, before I had stopped to think.
But the doctor was not offended. "Yes, I have, and I'm jolly proud of her!" he said. "It's she, not I, who keeps dark in Merriton about her past glories.... She wants only to be Mrs. Paul Jennings here in the country. Hello, chérie! Here I am!"
Gaby Lorraine was a well-known musical comedy actress; at least had been. Before the war and even during the first year of the war she had been seen and heard a good deal in England. Because of her pretty singing voice and smart recitations, she had been taken up by people more or less in Society. Then she had disappeared, about the time that Grandmother took me to Rome, and letters from friends mentioning her had said there was some "hushed-up scandal." Exactly what it was nobody seemed to know. One thought it had to do with cocaine. Another fancied it was a question of kleptomania or "something really weird." The world had forgotten her since, but here she was, a Mrs. Jennings, married to a Devonshire village doctor, greeting her husband like a good wife at the railway station.
Nothing could have been more perfect than her conception of this new part she'd chosen to play. Neat, smooth brown hair; plain tailor-made coat and skirt; little white waistcoat; close-fitting toque; low-heeled russet shoes; gloves to match: admirable! Only the "liquid powder" which gives the strange pallor loved in Paris suggested that this chic figure had ever shown itself on the stage.
"I wish I knew what the scandal had been!" I murmured half to myself and half to Jim, as we parted in the station after introductions.
"That sounds unlike you, darling," Jim reproached me. "Why should you want to know?"
"Because," I explained, "whatever it was, is the reason why she married this country doctor. If there'd been no scandal, Mademoiselle Gaby Lorraine wouldn't be Mrs. Paul Jennings."