'What I did.'
'What did you do, Dolly?' I asked, now thoroughly uneasy; had her recklessness gone so far as to lead her to tamper with the Commandments?
Dolly tore off currants and leaves in handfuls and flung them together into the basket. 'I married my uncle,' she said.
'What?' I said, really astonished.
'Karl—that was my second husband—was Siegfried's—that was my first husband's—uncle. He was Siegfried's mother's brother—my first mother-in-law's brother. My second mother-in-law was my first husband's grandmother. In Germany you can. In Germany you do. But it's forbidden in the English Prayer Book. It's put in the Table of Kindred and Affinity that you mustn't. It's number nine of the right-hand column—Husband's Mother's Brother. And Kitty well, you can guess what Kitty has felt about it. If it had been my own uncle, my own mother's brother, she couldn't have been more horrified and heartbroken. I didn't realise. I didn't think of the effect it might have on them at home. I just did it. They didn't know till I had done it. I always think it saves bother to marry first and tell afterwards. I had been so many years in Germany. It seemed quite natural. I simply stayed on in the family. It was really habit.'
She threw some currants into the basket, then faced me. 'There,' she said, looking me straight in the eyes, 'I've told you, and if you think me impossible I'll go.'
'But—' I began.
Her face was definitely flushed now, and her eyes very bright.
'Oh, I'd be sorry, sorry,' she said impetuously, 'if this ended us!'
'Us?'