She held on to his arm. She seemed curiously reluctant to let him go.
“Everard,” she said, “when we are at Dominey shall I be able to see Doctor Harrison?”
“Of course,” he assured her.
“There is something I want to say to him,” she confided, “something I want to ask you, too. Are you the same person, Everard, when you are in town as when you are in the country?”
He was a little taken aback at her question—asked, too, with such almost plaintive seriousness. The very aberration it suggested seemed altogether denied by her appearance. She was wearing a dress of black and white muslin, a large black hat, Paris shoes. Her stockings, her gloves, all the trifling details of her toilette, were carefully chosen, and her clothes themselves gracefully and naturally worn. Socially, too, she had been amazingly successful. Only the week before, Caroline had come to him with a little shrug of the shoulders.
“I have been trying to be kind to Rosamund,” she said, “and finding out instead how unnecessary it is. She is quite the most popular of the younger married women in our set. You don't deserve such luck, Everard.”
“You know the proverb about the old roue,” he had replied.
His mind had wandered for a moment. He realised Rosamund's question with a little start.
“The same person, dear?” he repeated. “I think so. Don't I seem so to you?”
She shook her head.