'Dolly,' she said almost immediately, almost before we had got round the turn of the path, 'is the object of my tenderest solicitude and love.'
'I know. I see that,' I said, sympathetically.
'She was the object of my love from the moment when she was laid, a new born baby, in the arms of the little ten year old girl I was then, and she became, as she grew up and developed the characteristics I associate with her name, the object of my solicitude. Indeed, of my concern.'
'I wish,' I said, as she stopped and I began to be afraid this once more was to be all and the shutters were going to be shut again, 'we might be real friends.'
'Are we not?' asked Mrs. Barnes, looking anxious, as though she feared she had failed somewhere in her duties as a guest.
'Oh yes—we are friends of course, but I meant by real friends people who talk together about anything and everything. Almost anything and everything,' I amended. 'People who tell each other things,' I went on hesitatingly. 'Most things,' I amended.
'I have a great opinion of discretion,' said Mrs. Barnes.
'I am sure you have. But don't you think that sometimes the very essence of real friendship consists in—'
'Mr. Barnes always had his own dressing-room.'
This was unexpected, and it silenced me. After a moment I said lamely, 'I'm sure he did. But you were saying about Dol—about Mrs. Jewks—'