Lady Caroline, however, could not have heard, for she continued to sip, her elbow on the table, and listen to what Mrs. Wilkins was saying.
And what was it she was saying? She had invited somebody to come and stay? A man?
Mrs. Fisher could not credit her ears. Yet it evidently was a man, for she spoke of the person as he.
Suddenly and for the first time—but then this was most important—Mrs. Fisher addressed Mrs. Wilkins directly. She was sixty-five, and cared very little what sorts of women she happened to be with for a month, but if the women were to be mixed with men it was a different proposition altogether. She was not going to be made a cat’s-paw of. She had not come out there to sanction by her presence what used in her day to be called fast behaviour. Nothing had been said at the interview in London about men; if there had been she would have declined, of course, to come.
“What is his name?” asked Mrs. Fisher, abruptly interposing.
Mrs. Wilkins turned to her with a slight surprise. “Wilkins,” she said.
“Wilkins?”
“Yes.”
“Your name?”
“And his.”