“Oh yes. Like—who is it? I forget.”
“Anna Karenine? You know about Anna?”
“Nanda,” said the Duchess, “has told him. But I thought,” she went on to Mrs. Brook, “that Lady Fanny, by this time, MUST have gone.”
“Petherton then,” Mrs. Brook returned, “doesn’t keep you au courant?”
The Duchess blandly wondered. “I seem to remember he had positively said so. And that she had come back.”
“Because this looks so like a fresh start? No. WE know. You assume besides,” Mrs. Brook asked, “that Mr. Cashmore would have received her again?”
The Duchess fixed a little that gentleman and his actual companion. “What will you have? He mightn’t have noticed.”
“Oh you’re out of step, Duchess,” Vanderbank said. “We used all to march abreast, but we’re falling to pieces. It’s all, saving your presence, Mitchy’s marriage.”
“Ah,” Mrs. Brook concurred, “how thoroughly I feel that! Oh I knew. The spell’s broken; the harp has lost a string. We’re not the same thing. HE’S not the same thing.”
“Frankly, my dear,” the Duchess answered, “I don’t think that you personally are either.”