“Oh, no!” she answered; “but, you see, we live so quietly. I have never been to one of those places. I’d love to go—but if we were seen! Wouldn’t people talk?”
Peter Ruff smiled. Just the same dear, modest little thing!
“I can assure you,” he said, “that nothing whatever could be said against our lunching together. People are not so strict nowadays, you know, and a married lady has always a great deal of latitude.”
She looked up at him with a dazzling smile.
“I’d simply love to go to Prince’s!” she declared.
“Cat!” Miss Brown murmured, as Peter Ruff and his client left the room together.
Peter Ruff returned from his luncheon in no very jubilant state of mind. For some time he sat in his easy-chair, with his legs crossed and his finger tips pressed close together, looking steadily into space. Contrary to his usual custom, he did not smoke. Miss Brown watched him from behind her machine.
“Disenchanted?” she asked calmly.
Peter Ruff did not reply for several moments.
“I am afraid,” he admitted, hesitatingly, “that marriage with John Dory has—well, not had a beneficial effect. She allowed me, for instance, to hold her hand in the cab! Maud would never have permitted a stranger to take such a liberty in the old days.”