"Mrs. Vivian?" said he. "Oh, yes, an English type, earnest widow."
"With an ear-trumpet now," continued Dodo; "and I shall get her some day. And Jack comes this afternoon. Voilà, the round table again! I take up the old life anew, with the younger generation as well, not a penny the worse."
"You are a good many pennies the better," said he in self-justification. "As regards Lord Chesterford: why is he coming here?"
"I suppose because, like you, he wants to see me and Nadine or both of us."
"Do you suppose he wants to marry you?" he asked. "Will you marry him?"
Dodo got up, reveling in her sense of liberty.
"Waldenech, you don't seem to realize that certain questions from you to me are impertinent," she said. "My dear, what I do now is none of your business. You have as much right to ask Mrs. Vivian whether she is thinking of marrying again. You have been so discreet and pleasant all these days: don't break down now. I have not the slightest idea if Jack wants to marry me now, as a matter of fact; and I have really no idea if I would marry him in case he did. It is more than twenty years since I spoke to him—oh, I spoke to him out of a taxi-cab the other day, but he did not answer—and I have no idea what he is like. In twenty years one may become an entirely different person. However, that is all my business, and no one else's. Now, if you have finished, let us take a stroll in the garden before your carriage comes round."
"I ask then a favor of you," he said.
"And what is that?"
"That you be yourself just for this stroll: that you be as you used to be when we met that summer at Zermatt."