Ide sounded again his little reassuring laugh. “I’m not sure that you realize. They’re all right.”
It was the very phrase that the young lady in the next seat had applied to the unknown “Leila,” and its recurrence on Ide’s lips flushed Mrs. Lidcote with fresh courage.
“I wish I knew just what you mean. The two young women next to me—the ones with the wonderful hats—have been talking in the same way.”
“What? About Leila?”
“About a Leila; I fancied it might be mine. And about society in general. All their friends seem to be divorced; some of them seem to announce their engagements before they get their decree. One of them—her name was Mabel—as far as I could make out, her husband found out that she meant to divorce him by noticing that she wore a new engagement-ring.”
“Well, you see Leila did everything ‘regularly,’ as the French say,” Ide rejoined.
“Yes; but are these people in society? The people my neighbours talk about?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It would take an arbitration commission a good many sittings to define the boundaries of society nowadays. But at any rate they’re in New York; and I assure you you’re not; you’re farther and farther from it.”
“But I’ve been back there several times to see Leila.” She hesitated and looked away from him. Then she brought out slowly: “And I’ve never noticed—the least change—in—in my own case—”
“Oh,” he sounded deprecatingly, and she trembled with the fear of having gone too far. But the hour was past when such scruples could restrain her. She must know where she was and where Leila was. “Mrs. Boulger still cuts me,” she brought out with an embarrassed laugh.