"Well, Ruth!"
This was the woman whom he had once loved, kissed, and engaged himself to marry. He was relieved that she had begun with Christian names, because he could not recall her surname. He could not even remember whether he had ever heard it. All he knew was that, after leaving Bursley to join her father in Birmingham, she had married somebody with a double name, somebody well off, somebody older than herself; somebody apparently of high social standing; and that this somebody had died.
She made no fuss. There was no implication in her demeanour that she expected to be wept over as a lone widow, or that because she and he had on a time been betrothed therefore they could never speak naturally to each other again. She just talked as if nothing had ever happened to her, and as if about twenty-four hours had elapsed since she had last seen him. He felt that she must have picked up this most useful diplomatic calmness in her contacts with her late husband's class. It was a valuable lesson to him: "Always behave as if nothing had happened—no matter what has happened."
To himself he was saying:
"I 'm glad I came up in my motor."
He seemed to need something in self-defence against the sudden attack of all this wealth and all this superior social tact, and the motor-car served excellently.
"I 've been hearing a great deal about you lately," said she with a soft smile, unobtrusively rearranging a fold of her skirt.
"Well," he replied, "I 'm sorry I can't say the same of you."
Slightly perilous, perhaps, but still he thought it rather neat.
"Oh!" she said. "You see I 've been so much out of England. We were just talking about holidays. I was saying to Mrs. Cotterill they certainly ought to go to Switzerland this year for a change."