"Yes, but wouldn't you like him to drive you home instead?" asked Vicky.
"No," said Lady Dering, wondering at the sound of her own voice. "No, my dear. I like walking."
She was left standing outside the butcher's shop, with her knees trembling a little under her. She went into the shop, and told the proprietor, to his bewilderment, that she wanted six pounds of granulated sugar. A jumble of thoughts seethed in her brain. What on earth have I done? she asked herself. What will William say? I quite thought it was going to be Mary Cliffe, but it's obvious he means to marry Vicky. Of course that mother is impossible, but Geoffrey Fanshawe was all right. She's an heiress, too, not that one ought to care tuppence about that, but in these days, what can one do? At any rate, William thinks she's a beauty, and she isn't any relation of that dreadful Wally Carter!
Rebuffed by the butcher, she had walked out of the shop, and was suddenly recalled to a sense of her surroundings by a strident motor-horn that made her jump. She found that she was in the road, with Dr Chester's car swerving across the street to avoid her. "Oh dear!" she said guiltily. "I'm so sorry! Oh, it's you, Maurice!"
The doctor, pulling up with a jerk, leaned out to inquire with a note of considerable surprise in his voice whether she had joined a suicide club.
"Dreadfully sorry!" said Lady Dering. "So stupid of me!"
"Can I give you a lift?" he asked. "I saw Hugh going towards Fritton, a minute or two ago, with Vicky Fanshawe."
"Yes, I know. No, I don't want a lift, thanks."
He hesitated, and then said: "Is there anything in that, do you think?"
The backward jerk of his head might have been taken to indicate almost anything in the street, but Lady I )ering did not pretend to misunderstand him. "My dear i plan, that's what bowled me over! Of course, I had begun't o have a faint suspicion, but I wasn't sure till this morning. I used to think he was rather attracted by Mary, but there's no question of that now!"