"Can we not? Mrs. Lambert was your friend."
"I can't think why." Tears came into her eyes. "There aren't many women like her.... You loved her, didn't you?"
"I loved her very dearly. More than she loved me. Though she loved me as much as I deserved," he added quickly.
"And she loved her husband. I know. I think he must be a pig! ... Why do we love things that are bad for us, and men that don't care for us? ... You would have married her, wouldn't you?"
"That was what I desired more than anything else," he rejoined in a voice full of regret.
This unreserved talk did not strike either of them as strange. Chalfont was usually sphynx-like about his innermost feelings, but with Maggy it seemed unnecessary to hide them. It did him good to unburden his heart to her. Maggy not only inspired confidence, she attracted it. It gave her a double hold on sympathy.
"She would have been 'my lady' then," she said thoughtfully. "What a draw that would be to a lot of women—the women who don't put love first. It's when we love that we don't think what we get by it.... If the Earl of the Scilly Isles came crawling all the way from Scotland and wanted me to marry him I wouldn't leave Woolf."
Chalfont lost sight of her amazing geography in the surprise he felt at the name she mentioned.
"Woolf! What Woolf?" he stared.
"Fred Woolf," she said with a touch of pride. "He owns the Jockey's Weekly and Primus cars. You must have heard of Biretta, his racehorse."