“What an extraordinary stroke of fortune it is,” he declared, “that you should have chosen this particular corner of Norfolk to settle down in.”
“It makes the world seem a small place, doesn’t it?” she remarked, frankly licking her delicately manicured fingers and placing the lid upon the box with a great air of determination. “It was my aunt living here, of course, which decided us.”
“Madame,” he confided, “has been the one picturesque figure in this neighbourhood for years. She was always beautiful, and she is always on the point of being cured. I believe that my father looks upon her as his greatest friend.”
“She is very attractive,” Claire admitted. “She wears the most beautiful clothes I have ever seen. I wonder whether it is a proof of vanity or of an immense sense of self-respect which leads a woman who spends her whole life upon a couch to take such pains with her appearance.”
“If it be vanity, there is a leaven of philanthropy in it,” he observed, “because every one loves looking at her. Besides, I believe now she really is going to get well. This new doctor who comes over from Norwich has performed some wonderful cures. It isn’t as though the weakness had been born with her. It was all the result of that motor accident, you know.”
“It would be wonderful if she got well,” Claire murmured.
They talked for a while of trifles; the absence of other neighbours, the country around.
“When one gets over the spell of this lotuslike existence,” she asked him, “what is there to do here—in the way of exercise, I mean?”
He looked down at the sunken lawn.
“Your tennis court used to be good,” he said. “One of ours is quite playable and there are plenty of golf links a few miles away.”