Damaris turned round, all of a piece. Her hands, white against the black, the fingers slightly apart, still pressed back the skirt of her dress as though saving it from the fire scorch, in quaintly careful childish fashion. Her complexion was that of a child too, in its soft brightness. And the wonder of her great eyes fairly challenged Carteret's wits.
"A babe of a thousand years," he quoted to himself. "Does that look grow out of a root of divine innocence, or of quite incalculable wisdom?"
"I told you if you would be patient with me I should begin again. I have begun again, dear Colonel Sahib."
"So I perceive," he answered her.
"Is it written so large?" she asked curiously.
"Very large," he said, falling in with her humour. "And where does the beginning lead to?"
"I wish you'd tell me.—Henrietta has begun again too."
"I know it," he said. "Our incomparable Henrietta overtook me on her way from here to the Vicarage, and bestowed her society on me for the better part of half an hour. She was in astonishing form."
Carteret came forward and stood on the tiger skin beside Damaris. Mrs. Frayling's conversation had given him very furiously to think, and his thoughts had not proved by any means exhilarating.
"Does this recrudescence of our Henrietta, her beginning again, affect the scope and direction of your own beginning again, dearest witch?" he presently enquired, in singularly restrained and colourless accents.