"Or that I should come without him?"
"We pictured you pretty extensively married, I confess."
"So I was—so I am, I mean." She remembered her promise; she was not to mention her great resolve. But it struck her that the pledge would be hard to keep. Already the atmosphere of Shaylor's Patch suggested that her position was eminently one to talk over, to discuss with an open-minded sympathetic friend, to speculate about in all its bearings.
"But you mustn't think I'm absolutely hidebound," she went on. "I can think—and act—for myself." She was skirting the forbidden ground.
"I'm glad of it. Is Maxon?" There was a humorous twinkle behind his spectacles.
"Why are we to talk of Cyril when I've just begun my holiday?" Yet there was nothing else that she really wanted to talk about. Oh, that stupid promise! Of course she ought to have reserved the right to lay the case before her friends. But a promise is a promise, however stupid. That certainly would be Cyril's view; and it was hers. Was it, she wondered, the Shaylor's Patch view? Or might a question of ethics like that be to some extent "in solution"?
"He thinks me an awful reprobate?" Stephen asked.
She nodded, smiling.
"So they do down here, but my friends in London call me a very mild specimen. I expect some of them will turn up while you're here, and you'll be able to see for yourself."
"You don't mind being thought a reprobate down here?"