“Oh no! no! Let us hope it won’t come to that. Mind, I’m not accusing Madge of anything but foolish flirting. She made a dead set at him, I must say that. I don’t believe that otherwise he would have taken any notice of her. But Madge is so vain. And then she has an idea she isn’t happy with her husband. Well! a wife must make the best of the man she marries. I make a point of getting on with Louis.”
“I’m sure you do, dear,” interrupted her aunt. “You’re so wise.”
“But you think she’s really staying on to——?”
“I fear that the excuse of her illness is only half true. She’s staying on I believe to—well, to go on with the flirtation, let us say.”
Madame Didier laughed a little, and took a fresh thread of silk.
“Madge is a nice little thing, of course, but she’s very flighty. I can’t help thinking that she must have fallen under some bad influence lately. She comes from such a good home. I used to stay with her at her father’s house just outside York, when we were schoolgirls. The Etheridges are county people, you know. Not very rich, but well connected, and in the nicest set. No fastness or anything horrid of that sort. The right sort of quiet county people. You know what I mean. We rather thought she might have done better than a country doctor.”
“Dr. Dakin is extremely well connected,” put in Mrs. Carfax a little stiffly. He was a neighbour after all, and she felt that the slighting reflection might easily extend from the faculty, to the Church, of which her husband was so distinguished an ornament.
“Oh yes, I’m sure of it,” Madame Didier hastened to reply. “And a clever man, I hear.”
“Extremely clever. And devoted to his wife. This will be a terrible blow.”
Mrs. Carfax leant back in her chair, and wondered whether she should write to George, or wait till her return. She decided to wait. A verbal recitation would be more effective.