'She's a flirt, then?'
'Bid—' Mrs Gildrea swallowed the rest. 'SHE would scorn such a commonplace suggestion. Do you remember that novel of Hardy's, THE WELL-BELOVED? She's like the man there, who was always in love with the same Ideal—under different forms—until he found that he'd made a mistake, and then the game began all over again.'
McKeith ruminated. 'SHE'S like that, is she? ... The fellow is what you'd call a bounder?' he exclaimed suddenly.
'So I imagine.'
'But she's in love with him—she must be, or she wouldn't write like that?'
'You don't know her. She can't do anything by halves—while she's doing it.'
'By Jove, that's what I like. There's a woman who'd never hang on the fence. And her ideas about love and all that: it's splendid.'
He brooded again a few moments, while Mrs Gildea sorted her papers afresh; then he exclaimed:
'It strikes me, she's one of the sort I was talking about just now.'
'Well, she WAS born in a castle.'